


Bittersweet

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Series: Part of Me [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Awkward Barry, Barry does not believe in soul mates, Canon Related, M/M, Not Beta Read, Oliver Queen Being an Asshole, Oliver is sort of a creep at first but he grows up, POV Alternating, Poor Barry, Protective Oliver, Slow Build, this makes Oliver sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 01:24:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 56,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5689225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry had long ago given up on the notion of soul mates and not because he wasn’t an absolute romantic, he loved romance, but because the concept was… limiting. There were billions of people on this planet and only one of them was his perfect match? That was crazy.</p><p>Oliver had five years of experience with soul mates. Five years of dreams of Barry, of them talking, bonding, and Barry didn’t remember any of it. Just his fucking luck. </p><p>Or: I Obviously Love Soulmate AU's Because I've Written 500 of Them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoodSourceofFiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodSourceofFiber/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has some canon elements, at least for the beginning, but it's an AU, I'm not following the plot for their show at least not like it was presented in canon.

Barry had long ago given up on the notion of soul mates and not because he wasn’t an absolute romantic, he loved romance, but because the concept was… limiting. There were billions of people on this planet and only one of them was his perfect match? That was crazy, there had to be more than _one_ person for him, it made no sense otherwise. There must be something though, even if he didn’t want to admit it, because he got the dreams. Granted he never remembered any of them, which Iris and Joe seem to think is a life saver because he used to regularly wake everyone in the near vicinity up when he started inevitably screaming and thrashing around. Eventually Joe took him to a doctor, despite Barry’s insistence that he didn’t need to go, so that the dreams would stop.

The doctor had been hesitant to do so, the dreams were supposed to be some sacred thing, but Barry just wanted everyone else to stop worrying. Plus he never remembered the dreams anyways so what was the point? He did eventually get something to take and thankfully the pills didn’t make him drowsy or anything and Joe stopped worrying so much. “Come on Iris,” Barry says as they walk to the doors of the police station, “you can’t just _know_ someone is your soulmate, that makes no scientific sense,” he says. “And really, only one person over all of time and space, and the bond is always romantic? Yeah okay, that sounds like something out of a bad novel,” he says.

Iris sighs, “you’ll know, trust me, and there are lots of people who say they have more than one soul mate, and there are lots more who say the bond is platonic,” she points out.

“Those people are labeled nutcases, Iris, even if they’re probably right. I’m just saying that the soul mate thing is cute in movies but it just doesn’t exist,” he says, shrugging. They go through the doors, still bickering about whether or not Barry was right, which he was, even if Iris refused to admit it.

“You have the dreams though, how you can you deny something you experience?” she asks, exasperated.

“Because I never remember them, Iris, if they were so sacred or whatever don’t you think I’d remember them? And none of the other stuff has happened, I’ve never felt my supposed soul mate’s pain, I’ve never randomly gained knowledge I’ve never had before, there are no unusual food likes and dislikes, one of my eyes isn’t the colour of my soul mates, I don’t feel emotions that aren’t mine. All I have is a bunch of dreams I don’t remember that apparently terrify me until I wake up with no knowledge of what I just dreamed. If you ask me that has nothing to do with soul mates, that’s just regular night terrors that are probably related to my mother’s pretty horrific death and my therapist agrees,” he says.

He’s thought long and hard about this, he has, but nothing led him to believe that soulmates were an actual thing except media romanticizing and people’s claims that it was a thing. He’s read studies, he’s done his research, and by all accounts it made no sense. Science, so far, had concluded that soul bonds, though evidence for them existed, seemed to be more cultural than anything. Soul bonds didn’t even exist in the same ways cross culturally, how could someone believe in something that was so easily warped and changed? Of all the accounts of soul bonds the only thing that remained the same no matter the situation, geographical area, or culture was the dreams. Everyone with a soul bond claimed to have dreams of their soul mate but Barry didn’t really buy it.

“Well Barry I think you’re wrong,” she says but she goes off to talk to Eddy, who Iris seemed to think was her soulmate but again, Barry had doubts. Iris didn’t get any of the ‘typical’ soul mate things either so why she defended the concept he had no idea. He leaves her be though, going off to find Joe to deliver coffee and see when, exactly he might be home. It was a pretty busy week for him considering they had all moved off to Starling City after both Joe and Barry had been offered a job there that paid better and then Oliver Queen comes back from the dead. Iris had come along because she hadn’t had any better prospects in Central City and then she had gone off and met Eddy. He wondered how long it would take for her to claim he was her soul mate. He probably shouldn’t be so cynical but the thought was just… absurd to him, even if it was a cute romance trope.  

It turned out Joe had no idea when he was going to be home and Oliver wasn’t being overly helpful as to where he’d been and what he was doing. They knew he was on an island, that’s where he was found, but things didn’t add up and Oliver wasn’t giving them much to work with. Barry sighs, “well alright I guess, I’ll see you at home yeah?” he asks.

Joe shrugs, “if they don’t decide to bring you in on this case yeah, if not then I guess we’re both stuck here,” he says.

“God I hope not,” he says, “I guess I’ll see you when you’re freed from Queen drama.” He awkwardly waves at Joe and turns to leave but as he does so he nearly runs into Oliver Queen himself.

If it hadn’t happened to him he never would have believed it was true because it made no sense whatsoever. For e second he’s frozen, staring at Oliver with the strangest feeling that he knew him and he _swears_ he hears Oliver’s voice in his own head, asking if it was really him, but then he shakes himself out of it. “Ugh,” was all he got out before Oliver seemed to flip a switch and he goes _nuts_ , grabbing Barry by the throat and shaking him.

“You sonofabitch, you knew the _whole time_ and you didn’t say _anything_? What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?” he yells. Barry’s response was to do a lot of flailing and glaring because he had no fucking clue what Oliver was yelling about.

Eventually Joe manages to free him, thankfully because he was starting to get a little air deprived and his throat was burning. He coughs and gasps for breath while someone else drags Oliver back a little but he seemed to have little interest in trying to kill Barry now. Finally Barry manages to catch his breath, rubbing his throat and giving Oliver the side eye. “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” he gets out, his voice scratchy and painful.

“The fucking dreams, you asshole,” Oliver snaps.

Barry straightens up and rolls his eyes, “I don’t remember my dreams, and thanks to my waking up screaming and flailing around all the time now I’m on heavy sedatives to _stop_ dreaming. So again, I have _no idea_ what you’re talking about,” he says and rubs his throat. It probably wasn’t wise to do that much talking after having someone try to strangle him half to death. If nothing else he was used to having a raw throat from all the screaming he used to do.

Oliver looks guilty now but Barry can’t bring himself to care that the person who just tried to kill him felt bad about it because he didn’t remember his damn dreams. “If you’re my soul mate, and that’s a big ‘if’, I firmly believe that the universe has made a huge mistake because there is _no way_ we are meant for each other,” he says. People gasp as if he’s said something shocking, which he thinks is stupid because Oliver just tried to _kill him_ , and he walks out of the station without looking back. Thankfully no one calls him in to work on the case and for that he’s grateful.

*

Five years. Five _fucking_ years on an island, working for A.R.G.U.S, and being used as a god damn pawn. Five years of dreams of Barry, of them talking, bonding, and Barry didn’t remember _any_ of it. He had wondered for a while, why Barry never seemed to deliver on his promises, but Oliver figured maybe he didn’t know what to do exactly. Then he tried to escape himself, with little success, and then he kind of started to hate Barry. He never seemed to remember that in his sleep, though, and apparently Barry didn’t remember anything at all about him. Admittedly he might have overreacted a little upon seeing him but he didn’t know Barry didn’t remember. He just thought the guy knew all the shit he’d been going through and let him fry, he couldn’t really be blamed for being angry about it.

But the look on Barry’s face, that anger, the betrayal, the shock. And then he had said the universe made a mistake in pairing them together and maybe Barry didn’t remember the dreams but Oliver did. He knew Barry, and Barry knew him even if he didn’t know it, they were _perfect_ for each other and Barry called that a mistake. He should have expected it; of course Barry wanted nothing to do with him, there wasn’t much there that made him desirable at all. He was broken beyond repair, jagged, rough to touch. Actually he wasn’t really the touching type, not at anymore. After five years in which almost all the physical contact he’s ever had was negative he couldn’t help but flinch every time someone came near him.

He was pretty sure that made his mother sad but he couldn’t help it really, he had been half expecting her to stab him when she hugged him in the hospital. It was unfair, he knew, to project those kinds of thoughts onto people that hadn’t done anything wrong but he couldn’t help the way his mind seemed to work. For now it was mostly fine, no one seemed to be fond of touching someone they considered fragile at the moment but he knew eventually that would change and he wasn’t much looking forward to it.

His story makes no sense, he knows, but he keeps repeating the same thing so they eventually let him go so he can rejoin society or whatever. His mom talks the whole way home, compelled to fill the silence that he was leaving behind, and when she wasn’t talking Thea filled the silence. They were excited to have him back, he knew, but he couldn’t help but resent them for not knowing what he’d been through. He resented himself more for not being able to tell them. But he signed the fucking contract; he’d keep his mouth shut, and A.R.G.U.S would stay the hell away from him and his family.

When they get home he makes the first excuse he can to leave and retreats to the merciful silence of his room. He throws himself on his bed and it’s so soft, too soft. Looks like he was sleeping on the floor tonight because there was no way he could sleep on something that felt kind of like it was about to suck him in. This was nothing new; it’s been happening off and on for years in between A.R.G.U.S taking him in or abandoned him on that god forsaken island. He was used to it, unfortunately, but he knew how to deal with it at least.

He rolls out of his too soft bed and pads around his room, taking in the all-too-familiar yet completely alien surroundings of his room. Everything was as he remembered leaving it; it was almost like he was looking through time to look at his former self. A pair of his pants that were likely now too small was thrown over his desk chair, which was haphazardly pulled away from the desk, which was messy. There was a tipped over box of condoms on his night stand that were probably, no, definitely expired, and god knows what else he had no use for. He’s cleaning when Thea walks in, not bothering to knock and Oliver jumps, picking up the nearest thing that could be used as a weapon and she’s lucky he has fast reflexes. “Jesus Oliver, you’d think I was about to attack you,” she says, casually walking over to his bed and throwing herself on it.

“For all I knew you were, I did spend five years on an island and believe me everything wanted me dead,” he says even though that’s only partially true. Everything did want him dead though, and he had learned a massive amount of skills when he was away, Thea wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Thea shrugs and thankfully doesn’t take that as an opportunity to ask about the island, instead she chooses to ask about Barry. That Oliver would do, Barry was safe, an easy subject that hadn’t required contracts. “Nothing to worry about,” he says, somewhat brushing it off. He loved Thea, really, but he didn’t want to have a conversation with her, he didn’t want to have a conversation with anyone at the moment. He was tired and a conversation was only going to make him even more tired.

“You strangled your soul mate, Oliver; I think that’s something to be worried about. What did the poor guy do to you?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Oliver says because it was true, all Barry had done was not remember a thing. The dreams had started right after he was abandoned on that island and Barry was probably the only reason he hadn’t died in the first three days. He had a weird set of knowledge on plants and before Oliver ran into people, Slade in particular, he probably would have eaten at least three plants that would have made him sick according to Barry. At first the dreams were a little indistinguishable from reality, probably due to being traumatized, but eventually Barry only came to him in his sleep.

“So you strangled your soulmate for nothing, seems a bit extreme doesn’t it?” Thea asks, looking reasonably confused.

He sighs, “turns out he doesn’t remember his dreams, we’ve talking for years,” he mumbles.

“Oh my god so he knew where you were, kind of,” she says, “well no wonder you strangled him! I would too if I didn’t know there was a reason he didn’t send help. Oh my god Oliver, I’m so sorry, that’s awful!” she says, giving him that same pitying look everyone else did. He didn’t want her damn pity though, or anyone else’s, he was fine. He had, against all odds, survived his predicament and that shouldn’t earn him _pity_ of all things.

“Yeah he did, kind of, if he remembered anything at all. But he didn’t so,” he says, leaving off in the middle of his sentence. Thea, to her credit, tries her best to keep a conversation but eventually she leaves. She makes an attempt to hug him before he goes but he flinches so hard she just flees and he’s grateful for it.

*

Oliver does end up falling asleep in his bed out of sheer exhaustion and he probably would have slept fitfully if it wasn’t for Barry. He knows he’s dreaming, when he dreamed everything had a weird shiny quality to it, especially Barry.

“Hey,” Barry says softly, sitting beside him on the cliff that overlooked the ocean that had been one of the only things about the island he liked.

“Hey,” Oliver says, “sorry for strangling you,” he mumbles, looking everywhere but at Barry.

“Yeah, that may have been a bit… extreme,” he says.

“You reacted terribly,” he says even though the reaction was more than warranted.

“Oliver, you strangled me, obviously I reacted badly. At least I didn’t decide to press charges, that would have been worse,” he says, “but even conscious me thought that charging a guy who probably has some severe PTSD was a shitty thing to do.”

“You probably should charge me,” Oliver murmurs, looking away.

He feels Barry lean into him and he revels in the touch, it was the only kind he could stand now and he doubted that would translate to actual physical touching between him and Barry. He wished it would though because he needed touch, he was starved for it, but every time someone touched him he tensed up and flinched and people backed away slowly. “I’m not charging you Oliver, that’s just stupid,” Barry says quietly.

“So seems how you don’t remember your dreams do you have a time estimate for how long you’re going to hate me?” he asks, leaning into Barry too.

Barry sighs, “yeah, sorry about that, dream me forgot I always forget my dreams. Just… everything seemed so real I figured I _must_ remember them, they were too vivid to forget. As for a timeline… honestly I don’t know Ollie, I know you, I know I do, I just don’t know it yet. I’ll figure it out though, I just need time,” he says.

Oliver knew the feeling, he needed time to adjust and everyone kept throwing something new at him and he was quickly becoming overwhelmed with all the new information. He almost wished he could go back to the island because at least there he knew what to expect, he was safe, mostly, and it was _quiet_. He desperately needed some quite time and with his entire family member buzzing around his room it was impossible, it was almost like they were half expecting him to disappear.

Maybe they were, he probably would if he was in their situation, but he needed them to all fuck off and leave him alone. He wasn’t used to this much contact, at least not this kind of contact and it was hard to make the transition. “I hope you decide to actually give me a chance soon, I think you’re the only person I could stand right now,” he says quietly.

Barry links his fingers through Oliver’s, “I will, I know it, but I’m stubborn too. I won’t have an easy time letting go of the idea that soul mates are basically made up.”

Oliver frowns, “how could you think soul mates are made up?” he asks. The thought seemed absurd to him, obviously soul mates were real, he had one.

Barry laughs, “oh go talk to me, I’ll be sure to entertain,” he says. God Oliver loved Barry’s smile, it was so bright and even when he was faking it it seemed to always reach his eyes, like faking it till he made it actually worked for Barry. Oliver wished he could do that but he’d settle for watching Barry do it, he’d settle for watching Barry do just about anything. How he was going to explain being half in love with someone he’d never even met outside of a dream he had no idea, especially if Barry didn’t even believe in soul mates.

Who the hell didn’t believe in soul mates?


	2. Chapter 2

Barry assumed he was done with Oliver Queen; it made sense considering his supposed soul mate decided to _strangle_ him upon meeting him. The bruising, at least, had gone down significantly after two days. That is, of course, when Oliver Queen decides to show up and ruin his whole day. Well, Iris was the one who ruined his day in Oliver’s slight defense, but Oliver didn’t help any.

When someone knocks on the door Barry goes to get it but Iris practically sprints for it, no doubt having recognized Oliver’s car or something. She whips open the door and smiles wide, “hey Oliver, come in!” she says enthusiastically and Barry was determined to remind her that Oliver tried to _strangle him to death_ two days ago for not remembering his dreams.

“No, do not come in, get out,” Barry says, descending the stairs slowly and carefully. He was smart enough to stay out of strangle range now and his poor neck was healing nicely, he wasn’t ruining it with Round Two.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s a little upset about the strangling thing but that’s no big deal, come in,” Iris says and Barry cannot _believe_ his ears. Since when was attempted murder not a big deal? It absolutely was a big deal, especially to Barry’s bruised neck.

“I… no, you leave,” he says again, making shooing gestures in Oliver’s direction. He decides to step in, marginally in his slight defense, but he ignored Barry’s insistence to get out nonetheless and he wasn’t impressed with it.

“Can we like… talk?” he asks slowly, at least looking at Barry when he does it instead of Iris.

“No, last time you tried to kill me for existing a certain way, I learned my lesson,” he says, “besides, I’m leaving soon so I don’t have time.”

Iris gasps and claps his hands together, “oh that’s perfect, Oliver you can go with Barry to watch the particle thingy turn on!” she says, clapping happily.

“No,” Barry says at the same time Oliver says, “that sound great!”

“Great, you’re going to have to get going soon this is like Barry’s _dream_ honestly he is so excited!” Iris says enthusiastically.

“Well it isn’t now, I don’t want to go with him, he strangled me,” he says, unconsciously rubbing his neck.

“That’s… fine,” Oliver says, faking a smile and even Iris could tell that was fake and she wasn’t seeing past her own motivations.

“Give us _one_ second,” she says and grabs Barry, who was barely at the bottom of the stairs, and drags him into another room. “You give him a chance,” Iris tell him in a harsh tone.

“No, he _strangled_ me or are you just going to completely ignore the murder attempt?” he asks, mildly horrified that Iris would overlook such an important detail.

“Barry he’s lived on an island for five years, and apparently he’s been dreaming of you for most of them and you don’t remember a thing, of course he was mad! You could have got him off that island years ago, I’d strangle you too,” she says and Barry could not believe his ears.

“Iris where he was abandoned had _hundreds_ of islands, even if I did remember my dreams how would I know which one it was? He’d still be stuck there and that’s not my fault, I didn’t deserve to get strangled for that what the hell?” he asks, “and I think I did him a favor by not charging him for trying to kill me, I don’t owe him anything else thank you.”

Iris obviously didn’t have more of an argument but that wasn’t going to stop her any, “then do it for me,” she says.

Barry sighs and rubs his temple, “and why would I do this for you?” he asks.

“Because, this can be like… an experiment we run. Just _one_ night Barry, one night and you feel nothing by the end I’ll admit I was wrong and soul mates don’t exist,” she says, “but if you feel something then you have to admit I’m right and soul mate exist. Just _one_ night, Barry, and you won’t even have to pay attention to him because you’ll be watching the particle thingy turn on and… turn on,” she says, making a face.

“Is this a bad attempt at getting out of going with me, because I already told you that you didn’t have to go,” he says.

“No it’s not, I’m trying to get you to bond with your soul mate, now go and bond damnit. I’m trying to live vicariously through you and you aren’t cooperating very well,” she says, gently pushing his shoulder.

“Fine, but when I die I’m not going to be around to say I told you so,” he says, “let’s go Queen, I don’t want to be late, it’s bad enough I have to wear a scarf in warm weather just to look like a normal human,” he says.

Oliver looks happy for about two seconds until he’s reminded that he strangled Barry, “sorry,” he says and he sounds like he genuinely means it. That doesn’t exactly score him brownie points considering he should feel bad for strangling Barry; it was a mean thing to do.

“Yeah, whatever,” he mumbles and grabs his bag.

*

Barry decided that he liked John Diggle because he was hilarious. Oliver introduces him as his ‘hired babysitter’ to which Barry responds that from what he’s read Oliver needed one. Diggle had found this funny and instead of trying to hide his laugh from his would-be employer he lets it out, laughing softly as he drops into the drivers’ seat of the car. “I don’t need a babysitter,” Oliver mumbles and Barry snorts, he’s read all the stories online, Oliver was in need of a whole fleet of babysitters.

Granted he probably wasn’t the same person but Barry was bitter about almost being murdered, thanks, and he’d damn well express it. Even if he was certain Oliver wasn’t actually trying to kill him considering the damage wasn’t that bad. “I like you,” Diggle says, turning to smile at Barry as he backs out of the drive way.

Barry smiles, “thanks, I like you too,” he says in a chipper tone.

“Great, even Diggle is more liked than me,” Oliver mumbles, looking sulky and upset.

“Probably because I haven’t strangled him,” Diggle says and they giggle together while Oliver glares on. The ride isn’t totally silent, Oliver makes small talk about the particle accelerator, but Barry has infinitely more knowledge than him and he manages to outsmart Oliver in only a few ten dollar ticket terms. Diggle picks up where the conversation left off, easily keeping up with Barry’s knowledge. In Oliver’s defense at some point he seems to pick up on things and Barry watches the information click together to him. For some reason he remains quiet, which Barry finds odd because he was trying to impress him here and coming back from his epic fail would have been impressive.

They make it just fine and Barry asks Diggle about stopping by his apartment afterwards because he needed to pick a few things up. He was supposed to go with Iris but she left him with his almost-murderer instead so. Oliver quickly answers that that was fine and Diggle shrugs, apparently agreeing to the situation. For the most part Barry ignores Oliver’s presence though it wasn’t hard; he was genuinely interested in Dr. Wells’ research and he was hanging on every word. He had read the book, twice, and hearing Wells speak was like a dream come true. Oliver easily faded to the background until the end of the night when he remembered, right, he was there with someone.

“You seemed… interested,” Oliver says as they leave.

“Did I?” Barry asks, disinterested in Oliver’s observations.

“Absolutely enthralled would have been a better description,” Diggle says, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

“I’ve been a fan for a long time,” Barry says vaguely, not really wanting to allude to his mother’s death on his first ‘date’ so to speak. Actually he just didn’t feel like talking about it but still.

“I could tell, you knew what Wells was going to say before he did, obviously you’ve watched a lot of speeches and you’ve probably read the book at least once,” Oliver says and that throw Barry off. He hadn’t thought Oliver was paying attention, mostly because he hadn’t been paying any attention to Oliver but that obviously wasn’t true.

“Yeah,” he says, “I have. Like I said, longtime fan of his work,” he says and walks a little faster to avoid conversation.

Diggle seems to cooperate with his unspoken lack of conversation rule but Oliver tries a few more times. He got it, really, he’s been spoon fed all this crap about soul mates but honestly, by all means it made no sense and that was coming from someone with a pretty large capacity to except the possibility of the unknown. Thankfully Oliver decides to cooperate with him and he waits in the car while Barry runs upstairs to his apartment to get his things, trying to avoid being soaked by the storm that came out of nowhere.

When he gets up there he finds his ceiling leaking, again, not that it really mattered now but it was annoying nonetheless. He gathers his stuff; he only had a few things left to bring back anyways, while the rain continued to pour through the window. Once he gets everything in order he goes to the window to close it when a bright light catches his eye.

He looks over to find a huge cloud of what looked like lightning burst from S.T.A.R Labs and his eyebrows rise as he watches the wave from the explosion go outward, thankfully not shattering or even rattling any of the windows. He works quickly to try and close the window now, not wanting any debris from the explosion to get into the apartment and cause even more damage when the liquids start acting weird. What coffee was left in one of the cups he must have forgotten on the counter starts to life out of the cup and a glance towards the water on the ground tells him that liquid was reacting the same way.

As he looks up the lightning strikes, sending him flying backwards and across the floor of the apartment, out cold.

*

Oliver was more than happy to watch Barry while Barry watched Wells. He was a little upset that Barry didn’t even seem to notice him but he also had Diggle to focus on so he wasn’t paying one hundred percent attention either. Diggle was more than qualified to keep an eye on the old Oliver Queen, and he would have done a good job too, but new him had a skill set that rivaled Diggle’s own skills. He also needed to play dumb and he’d been pushing it earlier trying to attempt a conversation with Barry about the particle accelerator. Barry had held a surprising amount of knowledge and now if Oliver seemed too smart he could blame it on the connection to Barry as he had already established himself as intelligent to Diggle.

For now he watched Barry, or at least that’s what Diggle saw though it wasn’t a total lie, and he also kept an eye out for Diggle. The man blended well, better than Oliver would have expected, which was both good and bad. He knows his story is convincing, more so because he was genuinely paying attention to Barry. If only Barry hadn’t looked so surprised when he pointed this out later, and he was seriously debating on punching Diggle for laughing.

They drop Barry at his place, or former place, and Oliver stays in the car mostly so he could lick his wounds. “You’ve got yourself a feisty one,” Diggle comments and Oliver glares, “he’ll come around,” Diggle tells him and Oliver snorts.

“You don’t know Barry,” he says even though in a lot of ways he didn’t either.

“I know his type; he’ll get over the strangling thing. I have to admit that’s one hell of an impression you left though, that’ll be a fun party story,” he says and laughs. Oliver decides that he absolutely hates John Diggle and he was going to rid himself of the man immediately.

The two sit in silence, Oliver brooding while Diggle seems to scan the area. It wasn’t like he could see outside the window whatsoever, the rain was coming down hard and Oliver was somewhat worried that Barry would slip and fall or something. It would be just his luck that his soul mate would end up suffering the storm somehow. It turned out he was thinking too small and the universe had some other horrifying plans for him instead. They hear the explosion, barely, over the rain and they watch the sky light up as the shock wave rolls over the city. Diggle and Oliver exchange a glace and that’s when the lightning hits the building.

By all means Oliver shouldn’t have known but he does and he runs, Diggle following behind him, yelling at him for some sort of explanation. Thankfully Diggle thinks of calling an ambulance because the first thing Oliver thinks is that his soul mate was fucking dead, struck dead by lightning.

*

Oliver sits in the hospital with no god damn clue what to do. Now Iris hated him and somehow thought _he_ got Barry struck by lightning though Joe at least came to his rescue and pointed out that that made little sense. Diggle goes off to do whatever and Oliver doesn’t bother to watch him, they were in a hospital, what could he possibly do? Eventually they get news back that Barry had been stabilized and should make a full recovery against all odds. Two days later they get news that he’s being transferred off to S.T.A.R Labs, which Oliver questions and he never does get a reasonable response. Everyone else seems to think this is a good idea though and no one else wonders why, exactly, Barry would be carted off to the place that did this to him in the first place.

For nine months Oliver doesn’t dream of Barry at all, the first time in five years, and it’s unsettling.

*

Barry wakes up to two people arguing playfully about whether or not he liked a song, Poker Face by Lady Gaga. He did like the song, the one with dark hair was right; it was on his Facebook page. They walk further away from him and he gathers himself, trying to figure out the last thing he remembered and shit, right, he got struck by lightning and-

He sits straight up and scares the hell out of the two people in the room though they recover quickly and come running over, flashing lights in his face and telling him to pee in cups. Thankfully the dark haired one, Cisco, seems to recognize that Barry was confused as hell and tells him what was going on. He was in S.T.A.R Labs, he had been taken there after he had been hit by lightning, he’d been in a coma for nine months though Harrison Wells filled him in on that, and lightning gave him abs. Not the kind of workout routine he would recommend but he’d take it.

Caitlin and Wells go on about cellular structure and whatever, Cisco throwing a few tidbits in there here and there, but he only half pays attention. As crazy as it sounded he was tired and he kind of wanted to go back to sleep.

The rest of the week was a flurry of visits from his friends and family, including a few he didn’t even think of, like Felicity. He’d only met her briefly when there was a break in at Queen Consolidated and though they had instantly clicked but he still barely knew her. Still, that was better than his visit from Oliver, who seemed to have taken Barry’s life into his own hands and informed him that he had found Barry an apartment that he was paying for.

“No,” Barry says, wrinkling his nose, “I don’t need your help, go away,” he says. Even if he did have an interest in Oliver it wasn’t really going to work now considering the last week had revealed more than just who cared about him enough to sit by his bedside for hours despite that he did nothing but breath. Apparently the lightning had given him abs _and_ superpowers. So now Oliver had to go times two because how the hell was he supposed to keep this a secret from everyone he knew? Oliver was just one more complication that, in his opinion, wasn’t really needed soul mate or no.

“Alright fine, and you’re going to pay your bills with what money? You don’t have a job; you just got struck by lightning, and instead of moving back home where you should be you’ve decided to stay here. Face the facts, Barry, you need my help to live,” he says and _creepy_.

Cisco wrinkles his nose, “coming on a little strong there, buddy, little Edward Cullen if you will,” he says and Barry snorts and starts laughing. It was true, Oliver was being weird and stalk-y and seriously, he did not need Oliver to live for gods sakes. He’d find a way.

Oliver at least looks horrified, “I... that is not true!” he says, offended at the comparison.

Cisco makes a face, “’you need me to help you live’? That’s just creepy no matter how you spin it, man,” he says.

“Great, so now that we have re-established that I don’t like you go away,” Barry says, making shooing gestures in Oliver’s general direction.

“Aww come on Oliver, what did you do to the poor guy?” Felicity asks, rounding the corner to his general room area and right, Barry forgot she said she was going to stop by today.

“Aside try and kill me when we met?” Barry asks and everyone minus Oliver turns to him in shock, “what, did no one notice the giant hand shaped bruise on my neck when I first came in?” he asks.

“Ugh no,” Cisco says, “you have accelerated healing,” he mumbles under his breath.

“What was that, Cisco?” Oliver asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Shut up Oliver, okay normally I don’t defend this kind of thing but Oliver is a special kind of stupid so I’m going to assume he had a good explanation, am I right?” Felicity asks, giving Oliver a look. They knew each other? Since when? Well, probably visits with Barry. Oliver does, at least, have a somewhat reasonable explanation but that doesn’t mean Barry was going to accept it after that ‘need me to live’ line. _Creepy_.

“Have a good explanation for telling me I need you to live?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Oliver sighs and looks annoyed but he was the idiot that said it.

Felicity wrinkles her nose, “Oliver, creepy. Look, again I don’t really condone this sort of thing but Oliver doesn’t know how to communicate like a normal human, or even an average alien. So like… maybe give him a shot? I know he’s acting like a jackass but trust me, it’ll make a lot more sense when you get to know him a little,” she says, giving Barry pleading looks. Now even _Felicity_ was on Oliver’s side? What the hell had this guy done to the people around him?

“That’s basically code for ‘you get used to the fact that he’s an asshole’,” Cisco points out.

“Exactly,” Barry says, “and honestly why should I get to know you? I have no reason,” he says.

“Ugh, aren’t you soul mates?” Felicity asks, giving Oliver looks, probably wondering if he lied about that.

“Supposedly but as everyone has seen we’re a terrible match,” he says.

Cisco laughs, “oh man the universe fucked up big here, you two _suck_ together,” he says and walks off still laughing.

“Oh come on Barry, you can’t just not give your soul mate a chance, that’s just mean,” Felicity says.

“If he was any other person you’d all tell me to run for the hills! Under no normal circumstances would someone tell me to get to know someone who tried to strangle me upon meeting me and then later on told me I needed him to live better. That behavior would red flag anyone else out but because of some arbitrary soul mate bond that there’s no real evidence of I’m supposed to give him a chance? I don’t think so,” he says.

“I said you needed my help to live, not that you needed me to live,” Oliver mumbles, looking at the ground.

“Yeah honey, that’s helping you at all. He’s right, that’s really screwed up, but Barry, trust me, you just don’t know him that well. He’s not that bad, I swear. So how about a compromise, hmm? You two go on a date or something and I’ll come along too and Oliver isn’t going to strangle you with witnesses so you’re probably safe and then you can see what I mean,” she says.

“He strangled me in the middle of a very crowded police station Felicity, I don’t think he cares,” Barry says.

Felicity sighs, “you know what Oliver, I tried to help you here but you have to admit, Barry has some very legitimate worries about you. You have not made a very good impression at all,” she says, “I’m not sure you can come back from trying to choke someone half to death in a _police station_.”

Oliver sighs and leans against the doorway looking defeated. Barry feels bad, momentarily, until he remembers that he’s right and Oliver’s behavior was worrying at best.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not worry, Oliver will not be a creep forever D:

Barry hopes that maybe one Moira Queen would be able to help a guy out with her unruly child and then Barry won’t have to worry about Oliver paying his bills and being weird. Moira, though, has some other plans and if it wasn’t for Barry wanting the woman to control her child he probably would have turned down the tea. “So,” Moira says, poised perfectly with her tea, “my son seems to be rather taken with you,” she says.

Barry sighs, “I really wish he wasn’t,” he says.

Moira examines him and Barry gets the distinct feeling that he was in the middle of a test and he had no idea if he was passing or failing. “I believe you,” she says and he relaxes because _finally_ someone who was listening, “though you are a first. Usually people are drawn to Oliver, clearly you are an exception and whether or not he knows it he should be happy about that,” she says.

“Well I’m not overly drawn to people who strangle me and then tell me I can’t live without them separately let alone put together so. I don’t see why he should be happy about it; he’s kind of reacted like a scolded teenager so far,” he says, wrinkling his nose. The least the universe could have done was give him a soul mate with some maturity.

Moira laughs, “oh I assure you he has reacted nothing like he would have when he was a teenager, be glad you missed _that_ stage of his life,” she says. “And he should be happy because people have a penchant for using him for his looks or money. He has a bad habit of letting them too and he hasn’t seen many exceptions so far, it hasn’t made him very trusting. If you chose to get to know him, and that is a big if, you certainly wouldn’t be doing it strictly to benefit yourself so he should be happy about that,” she tells him.

Barry considers her words and he supposed they made sense. He had read the stories about Oliver, about his penchant for partying too much and not taking any responsibility for his actions. It never really occurred to him that Oliver had developed the habit as some sort of weird defense mechanism. “Was he really that bad?” he asks and Moira sighs.

“Oh he was absolutely dreadful, Thea’s just the same too. I love my children dearly but I wish they would be easier to deal with sometimes,” she says.

“At least they haven’t tried to choke you out,” he offers.

*

Moira Queen was no moron, she knew the moment she set eyes on Barry Allen that he truly wanted nothing to do with Oliver and that just wouldn’t do. Unfortunately for her everyone was currently working against her at the moment by telling Barry that he secretly did want a relationship with Oliver and that was causing him to dig his heels in further. Now it was up to her to simultaneously validate Barry’s feelings while also making Oliver seem like a desirable person, which Oliver himself has done an awful job at thus far.

She thought he couldn’t have made the situation worse but Oliver, as usual, has proved her wrong once again. She loved her son, she did, but if he could resist making things incredibly difficult for her _one_ time she would be infinitely grateful. Her method of making Oliver desirable is a simple one, all she needed to do was humanize him just enough that maybe Barry wouldn’t resist so hard. To do that she goes with telling embarrassing childhood stories because they were highly relatable, everyone had them, and Barry needed something positive to try and make up for all the negative.

Her methods work, it doesn’t take long to make Barry laugh, to get him to ask questions, all the while completely unaware that he was absorbing positive opinions of Oliver. It helped that Oliver was a particularly stupid child and had an abundance of embarrassing stories. Thea had been the cautious one up until recent years, now she seemed to had taken up all of Oliver’s old bad habits and she had no idea what to do about it.

Oliver, at least, she knew how to deal with because he had always been an absolute nightmare of a child. She had long ago developed and perfected her Oliver Taming methods and for the most part they worked, at least until Oliver found a way to reach a new level of stupid. Then she had to recalculate and try again but she always seemed to figure her son out. If only she had the same luck with her daughter, Thea left her at a loss because her recent behavior was so… _new_.

“Why would he do something so stupid?” Barry asks, laughing.

Moira shrugs, “Oliver was a very stubborn child and he always rose to a challenge. Also he had a strange misconception that bees were ‘chillers’ and he didn’t think they would do anything if he hit the beehive with a stick. Thankfully he and Tommy managed to escape with only a few stings and honestly I didn’t even bother to ask how, I was too caught up in trying to follow Oliver’s admittedly very flawed logic,” she tells Barry, who was doubled over laughing so hard he wasn’t making noise anymore.

“Oh my god,” he wheezes when he finally catches his breath, “Iris did the same thing when we were seven because Carrie dared her to. She managed to get inside before the bees caught up with her,” he says. She sees a golden opportunity and asks about Iris, who also seemed to share Oliver’s stubborn streak, and it isn’t hard for her to her to draw the parallels between the two.

Barry absorbs it all without realizing he was being played and that’s how it was going to stay. Oliver was a wonderful person, even if he didn’t like to let other people know that about him.

*

Barry leaves the Queen mansion feeling less anxious and Moira had promised to talk to Oliver about his creepy habits. He liked Moira, she was an interesting woman and she had plenty of hilarious stories about Oliver’s childhood to tell. He couldn’t believe that Iris wasn’t the only one who was stupid enough to hit a beehive with a stick because someone dared her to. Out of the two of them Barry had always been the cautious one, and the weaker one, and he was fine with that because he never got chased down by bees. Apparently Tommy and Oliver had a similar dynamic, except that Tommy egged Oliver on to do stupid shit and then bailed on him when it backfired while Barry tried to talk Iris out of doing the dumb thing.

“So how did your talk with Moira go?” Iris asks, far too interested in his love life.

“It went fine, she said she’d talk to Oliver,” he says and Iris looks disappointed, “what?” he asks, confused as to why Iris was so dead set on them being together.

“I’ve had time to think while you were in a coma and even though I kind of hated Oliver there for a little bit I’ve decided that he’s not actually a terrible person. Don’t look at me like that Barry, he visited you more than I did, I mean yeah he’s obviously not good at… anything relationship wise but he’s trying,” she says.

“I am deeply disturbed by people’s ability to completely ignore alarming behavior because soul mate,” he says because he is. At least Moira got it and she was Oliver’s mother, if she got it everyone else could too. Thankfully his conversation with Iris is cut short when she receives a call from Eddy and she goes off to do whatever it was she wanted to do.

He spends the rest of the day being lazy and flipping through channels and just for the hell of it he checks the news for Starling only to find some story about a nut case in a green hood killing people. Wow, okay, maybe the whole city was nuts? In any case it didn’t make him any more interested in Oliver though he wondered if the Hood would target him. Apparently the Hood was some sort of bastardization of Robin Hood and targeted one percenters, redistributing their money and wealth. The idea was good, but the practice left a lot to be desired.

Oliver was far from his mind by the time he orders pizza, eating the entire thing before going to bed.

*

“You need to learn how to market yourself better,” Moira says.

Oliver, for one, is offended, “I’m not a product,” he snaps, “there is no marketing myself because people can’t buy me, that makes no sense,” he mumbles.

His mother rolls her eyes at him, which was annoying to say the least. “Well Oliver maybe if you considered yourself a product you have to make sellable you wouldn’t be in this situation with Barry. I understand you initial reaction I do, but the rest is inexcusable and you know it so pull your head out of your ass and think before you speak. And for gods sakes give Barry room to breathe a little, smothering him is doing nothing for you so let him come to you,” she says.

“He _isn’t_ going to come to me though,” he says. He had five years’ worth of a bond into this; he wasn’t just going to just throw that away because conscious Barry was a stubborn ass.

“With the way you’ve behaved who can blame him?” Moira says, “don’t act like you’d stick around you if the situation were reversed.” Except the situation reversed was just laughable, Barry would never act like him and he sure as hell could never act like Barry, it wasn’t possible. He probably wouldn’t talk to himself though, he supposed he had behaved like an ass but he hadn’t meant to, his words just came out wrong.

“And if he doesn’t come back?” he asks.

“Then let him go, don’t you look at me like that Oliver, you can’t make someone love you. I like to think I raised you to respect yourself enough not to pine after someone who doesn’t want you, and I absolutely raised you to respect people’s boundaries. You aren’t stupid, Oliver, so if you could refrain from pretending you are that would be lovely,” she says, leaving the room annoyed.

He sighs and runs his fingers through his short hair; he was at a loss of what to do here because he couldn’t just do nothing. It didn’t feel right, it felt like he was abandoning Barry somehow, or failing him. It doesn’t really take that much self-introspection to know that he didn’t really feel like he was abandoning Barry, Barry was abandoning him and he didn’t want to get left behind by someone else. He understood why Barry wanted nothing to do with him, why he’d run for the hills, it wasn’t like Oliver had done a very good job at making himself seem like he was someone worthy of being around but damnit he wanted to be. He just had no idea how to make that happen, _if_ he could make that happen at this point.

“You really screwed up now,” Thea says and he was annoyed with her. She wasn’t an idiot either but she insisted on acting like one and that irritated him. He was more annoyed that she’d essentially told him to fuck off the last time they spoke, more so because she was right in telling him that he had no place to judge her. He had been far worse when he was her age and they both knew it.

“What’s new,” he snaps, that’s all his life seemed to be was one screw up after another.

“Oh don’t pity yourself, you’re the idiot who got yourself into this situation, get yourself out. If there’s anything you’re good at its charming people,” she says.

He laughs harshly because that was so far from true it wasn’t even funny, “I get what you’re trying to say Thea but saying that I ‘charmed’ people is being pretty generous. People wanted me for my money and looks and I was happy to let them use me because I was fucking terrified of being alone. Then I got abandoned on an island for five years so maybe I was right to be afraid but still. I didn’t charm people, I had something they wanted and they had something I wanted, it was a silent symbiotic agreement. There’s nothing about me that Barry would benefit from so why would he stick around?” he asks logically.

Thea looks confused, “okay I’m going to ignore the half of that that I didn’t understand. And the other half, wow, you have a really fucked up view of relationships, don’t you think? I mean has it even occurred to you that maybe Barry doesn’t need anything from you aside form enjoying your company?” she asks.

“The last two times we were in the same general vicinity that he remembers I tried to wring his neck and then I told him he couldn’t live without me. Please tell me where my company looks even remotely desirable in all that,” he says.

“It doesn’t, but you’re the one who decided to do those things so stop moping around like you weren’t the idiot who decided to act like an ass. If he comes back, and frankly I wouldn’t, then act like a normal human,” she tells him as if it was that simple.

“I was abandoned on an island for five years; acting like a ‘normal’ human isn’t exactly possible Thea. And even if I could just… go back to the way I was before I wasn’t exactly desirable then either, I was an absolute asshole. So please, tell me how the hell I’m supposed to know what to do here when there has never been a time in my life where I would have had the skills to deal with this,” he says, annoyed.

“Ever considered googling ‘how to deal with unruly soulmate’? Thea asks, “because that’s literally the most simple solution to your problem.”

Oliver looks at the ground, “no,” he mumbles. It wasn’t even like he could say technology was completely absent from his life for the past five years not that Thea knew that, but still, her solution was simple.

“Well then google it, like a normal human, and don’t fuck up the next interaction you have,” she says. Yeah, no pressure there and that was assuming they even _had_ a next interaction.

*

“You can run at super speeds and you regularly save the city from people who also, for all intents and purposes, have super powers and you don’t believe in soul mates?” Caitlin asks, “that seems a bit… contradictory,” she says.

Barry sighs and pulls his mask back, “so now you think I should give Oliver a chance too?” he asks, irritated. Even _Cisco_ was on Oliver’s side and he was the one who pointed out he was creepy when they first met.

Caitlin sighs, “I’m not saying give Oliver a chance, I think you’re right about him, I’m saying you should give soul mates a chance. Of all the things you chose not to believe in you choose soul mates? Why?” she asks.

He hops onto the desk and shrugs, “I just… it’s a nice idea I guess. But even if the universe hadn’t made a massive mistake with my supposed pairing the idea that only one person ever is made for me, and only me, and we happen to be in the same time period, geographical area, compatible, have similar life goals, like the same stuff, whatever else, it’s too good to be true. Does that not sound like too many coincidences all at once? And everyone meets their soul mate at some point? Come on, I’m an optimist but I’m not an idiot, there is no way that could possibly be true,” he says. It wasn’t like he hadn’t spent time thinking about it pre and post Oliver, he had, and his conclusions were the same.

“So you never get the weird cravings, suddenly want to see a movie you have no interest in, skills you never had before, nothing?” she asks, obviously speaking from experience. Great, just what Barry needs, a friend who fully believed in the soul mate concept and lost hers. Lovely.

“No, I haven’t gotten any of that,” he says, “the weirdest thing to happen to me in the last couple of months was being struck by lightning, acquiring super powers and accidentally becoming a super hero. Other than that nothing weird,” he jokes.

“Okay now that Barry has sucked all the fun and romance out of soul mates _again_ want some nachos?” Cisco asks, entering the room and holding a plate out to Barry.

Barry rolls his eyes, “no Cisco I don’t want nachos, I don’t like nachos, you know that,” he says before he can process what he’s saying.

Caitlin and Cisco both looked shocked, probably because nachos were one of his favorite foods. “Are you going to pass those nachos over or horde them to yourself?” he asks Cisco, who was now cradling the plate to his chest and looking at Barry like he just suggested they all go kick kittens.

“You just said you didn’t like nachos,” Cisco says, sounding deeply betrayed.

“What? No I didn’t, I love nachos, why would I tell you I didn’t want any?” he asks logically.

“Play back the camera footage,” Cisco tells Caitlin so she does and sure enough Barry does tell Cisco he doesn’t want nachos. What. The. Fuck.

“I change my mind about Oliver, he is a horrible human being and we should never speak of him again,” Cisco says, still deeply hurt by the nachos comment. Barry was certain this was some sort of fluke.

When Barry leaves S.T.A.R Labs the last thing he expects is to run into Oliver, literally, at the coffee shop he frequented. “Oh, shit I am so-” his words stutter to a stop when he realizes he ran into _Oliver_ , who does not live in this city, making his presence here suspicious.

Oliver looks surprised to see Barry, genuinely surprised, so maybe he wasn’t stalking Barry after all. He still had a healthy amount of doubts about that anyways. “Oh, uh, sorry,” Oliver says softly and moves to go around Barry, apparently done with that interaction.

“Do you want to talk? We might as well because literally everyone in my life would be pissed at me if I didn’t at least attempt a conversation,” he says with perhaps a bit too much bitterness.

He’s not certain what he’s expecting, especially because the bar for interactions with Oliver was set so low that he was half expecting a physical assault, but Oliver surprises him. He frowns, tilting his head to the side, “no,” he says and Barry’s eyebrows raise, “I don’t want you to talk to me because you feel obligated to. I want you to talk to me because you want to, otherwise it isn’t fair to either of us but mostly you,” he says. That was a surprisingly good answer, but when the bar was set so low he decided that probably wasn’t a whole lot of improvement.

“Ugh, okay then,” he says, not really sure how to respond to that.

Oliver gives him a tight smile and he can see that he’s hurt but he tells Barry to have a good day anyways and he turns to leave. “Hey wait,” Barry says and Oliver turns around with far too much hope on his face, “do you like nachos?” he asks but the look on Oliver’s face when he says ‘nachos’ gives him his answer before Oliver speaks. “What the hell kind of Disney villain doesn’t like nachos?” Barry asks, frowning before leaving Oliver on the stoop of the coffee shop to go get himself a black coffee.

Wait, caramel Frappuccino. He didn’t even like coffee let alone black.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to put up another chapter tonight, mostly because I need to update my other fic, but I couldn't help myself. 
> 
> Flash and Hood meet in this chapter! And it goes as well as you would expect.

He couldn’t believe that Barry thought he was a Disney villain for not liking nachos, it wasn’t his fault they were gross. Also he got _really_ drunk this one time and he and Tommy got nachos and they did not taste nearly as good coming up as they had going down. Now he couldn’t stand the smell let alone much else. He lets the thought go for now because he had more pressing matters at hand, like his next target, and this guy was making it _so_ easy for him. The guy had all but handed him the numbers to his bank account and Oliver watches as the guy’s account drains just before the time limit he gave was up. Smart move, he was fully prepared to shoot the guy through that nice large office window.

For a minute longer he sits and watches, just in case, but he leaves when it becomes clear that the guy has accepted his fate. Good. Oliver takes a few steps to the building’s edge and jumps, twisting in the air and shooting an arrow upward, catching the side of the building as the rope that attached to him went tight and he stops falling just before he hits the ground. It took him a long time to get ahold of that trick and he wasn’t fond of the resulting injuries. “Evidence, Oliver,” Diggle reminds him in his ear just as the arrow head blows up with a soft pop, just a small explosion meant to destroy the tip.

“Done,” he says back, his voice still altered by the device attached to his side. The entire arrow hadn’t been destroyed, but it was only the head that could have even traced back to him anyways and even then it was a long shot. Now if the cops even managed to find any of the fragments it wouldn’t give them anything useful at all, everything was made from generic materials that could be bought or sold anywhere.

By the time he makes it back to the Hood Cave, that was a name that was absolutely not going to be permanent, Felicity and Diggle had moved on to other subjects besides his list. “Have you seen this?” Felicity asks, handing him a newspaper from Central. He reads half the headline and hands the paper back.

“Irresponsible amateur,” he says. The Streak, which was a name worse than the Hood, seemed to be on the loose in Central saving people. Only the work this streak did was sloppy, on the fly, poorly timed, and generally not the work of a professional. Oliver was willing to bet whomever it was that was going around saving people was probably young, far too optimistic, a little too impulsive, and extremely underqualified for the job.

“I thought he was doing alright,” Felicity says, frowning at the paper.

“There’s evidence that this streak person is male?” he asks, curious as to what information had been found on the unknown person.

Felicity’s brows draw together and that didn’t bode well at all, “well the papers used male pronouns so I assumed…” she trails off, full well knowing a lecture was coming.

“And they probably don’t have any backup for that aside from a gender bias so now they’ve eliminated the possibility that nearly half the population of Central from being the streak for no reason at all. Stupid at best, irresponsible at worst, never assume,” he says, half repeating words that had been played back to him many _many_ times. Felicity sighs and Diggle doesn’t bother responding, having hear similar lectures about a variety of different subjects before.

“So,” Diggle says a few minutes later, “who’s next?” he asks. He knows Diggle is expecting him to go after his mother, and he knows she should be on the list too, but he couldn’t bring himself to even threaten to hurt her let alone follow through. He was not prepared to go out on a mission he had no intent on completing.

“That’s the end of the list,” Oliver says and he can feel the disapproval of Dig’s gaze, “but something is coming. I can feel it,” he says. It wasn’t an assumption based on evidence, which he usually dismissed, but his instincts were never wrong and he had long ago stopped going against that feeling in his gut. He could feel it, something just beneath the surface, itching at his skin, and it made him nervous that he had no plan. Everything he’s done thus far has meticulously planned down to the last detail with backup plans for the backup plans and now he was free falling.

He didn’t like it.

*

When the fainting spells started he didn’t think anything of it, not really, he attributed it to low blood sugar and he was mostly right in his defense. Caitlin figured out it was an imbalance of energy, too much going out with his power and not enough coming in. Cisco made him the protein bars and kudos to him because he actually made them taste good, thank god, because Barry was not eating something that tasted like dirt. He starts pushing himself a little more than because he can feel that his energy had returned and then some. Harrison warns him against it but he felt _fine_ really, so he ignores the warning.

It turned out that the warning wasn’t exactly something Barry could listen to anyways because a new metahuman had popped up and this one had the ability to turn to gas and was using that gift to kill people.  The power required Barry to push his boundaries anyways because outrunning gas was considerably difficult, even for him. For a week he chases the guy around in circles, always getting there just too late or just on time, forcing him to either save the victims or chase after the guy and Barry always chose to save the victims. Then all of the sudden the attacks stop and he and the team was left considerably confused, at least until Caitlin found the connection. All the victims testified against the guy in court and landed him in jail so now he was killing them all. Seemed counter-productive to Barry but what did he know?

“I know why he’s gone,” Caitlin says and they gather closer to the screen, examining an online news article from Starling city that outlined an attack exactly like the ones that had been happening in Central. Cisco swears under his breath while Caitlin hits the keys again, pulling up another name and address, “he has one more victim, also located in Starling and judging by the time period between the last victim and this one I’d say that he’s going to strike like… today,” she says and Barry was out the door in gear before Caitlin even finished, on his way to Starling.

*

Oliver wasn’t out of his depth per se, but he certainly hadn’t planned on facing an opponent that could turn themselves into… some sort of green cloud thing and Oliver wasn’t stupid enough to get too close. He wasn’t about to test whether or not that green cloud was poison by being killed by it. The first attack had been three days before and when Oliver asked Felicity to look it up considering the unusual qualities she found a string of others just like it in Central. Oliver ignored the panicky feeling he got worrying for Barry and asked Felicity to find the connection, which was how he ended up shooting a bunch of arrows through gas in an attempt to stop the guy.

He had already figured out he couldn’t remain in his gas form for long, it was just a matter of getting him to remain solid enough that he could get an arrow in just the right place. The last thing he expects if for that damn streak, who had been unsuccessful for the last week in catching this guy, to show up. He wasn’t out of his depth, he just happened to have crashed his bike trying to make a shot and he hadn’t paid enough attention to where he was going at the same time. He _had_ the guy, he just needed to get back to the bike but the gas was everywhere now and he couldn’t breathe let alone see.

Then that stupid streak shows up and pulls him out of the gas, pausing only for a second to deposit something in Oliver’s lap before running off again. His vision was getting blurry and he could hear Felicity panicking in his ear before Dig takes over, panicking less so than Felicity but still panicking. He had no clue what the thing was and he wasn’t going to just _test_ it. “It’s a cure to the poison, just stab yourself with it,” the streak says, making a sudden reappearance before zipping off again.

Oliver stares at the needle for a moment before deciding fuck it, he could feel all of his faculties slowing down and this couldn’t possibly make that worse so he stabs himself with the needle and hits the plunger. It takes him some time to gather himself and for his vision to stop blurring on him but eventually he becomes fully aware of his surroundings. Thankfully his hood was still up because the streak makes a reappearance then, “are you okay?” the person asks, voice masked by the vibrating his head was doing. Or at least Oliver thought the streak was a guy; the voice suggested it, though he knew that might not mean anything.

“I had him,” was what he chooses to respond with.

“Sure, while you were dying in the gas, okay,” the streak says and Oliver decides he doesn’t like the streak at all.

“Where did he go?” he asks, struggling to get up and look around the back ally they were in.

“Back to Central,” the streak says, “in a secure facility that’s meant to… contain his kind of abilities,” he says.

“Wha… what?” he asks stupidly, “how long was I out?” He only just realizes that his voice manipulator is still in tack and that was just sloppy work on his behalf.

“Probably an hour, you are okay though, right?” the streak asks again and Oliver was annoyed with this line of questioning.

“I’m alive aren’t I? What are you doing here? Don’t you have your own city to mess with?” he asks, irritated.

“Excuse me? I don’t really think you have a place to question _my_ methods considering yours. _You_ kill people, I save them,” he says and Oliver resists the urge to hit the streak if for no other reason than he’d probably miss.

“They had it coming,” he mumbles, “they deserved it.”

“ _No one_ deserves to die, what kind of hero are you, anyways?” the streak asks, offended.

“Plenty of people deserve to die,” he was one of them, “and I’m not a hero. I keep telling people that but only the police seem to listen, and not in a very good way.” He _was_ trying to help, but he knew what he was and that was not a hero. A vigilante, the police labeled him, but they said it like it was a bad thing when it wasn’t, not really. This city needed someone who was willing to take down the people who were hogging all the resources so he did it, it didn’t make him a hero but it didn’t make him a villain either.

“Can you blame them? You have a new victim every other week, you’re a glorified serial killer,” the streak tells him and he snorts, “and that doesn’t include the weird relationship you have to that one police officer’s daughter.”

“Laurel needed protection, I provided,” he says. Translation: he owed her. Big time.

“Seems to me you almost got her killed more than you helped but I already knew you had a twisted take on the word ‘help’ so,” he says, inexplicably ending that sentence without properly finishing it.

“Says the naïve child who thinks he can play superhero,” Oliver says, distaste coloring his tone, “you think you have what it takes to be a hero but your nothing more than a child attempting to play in the big leagues. Go home before you get someone hurt,” he says in a scathing tone.

“Fine. Next time I’ll leave you to die when you’re out of your depth and you need saving from the child who played in the big leagues better than you,” the streak says, tone just as scathing, before he runs off. Oliver fucking resented that, he did, but only because it was true.

*

Barry was _seething_. He didn’t have much of an opinion on the Hood before, he only knew what the news portrayed and what he got from Joe anyways, but now he _loathed_ the guy. He half wished he would have left him to choke on that poison cloud but Barry knows he could never follow through on that, even now. Cisco and Caitlin thought the whole interaction was hilarious had he had no clue why.

“Oh my god you _roasted_ that guy,” Cisco says, laughing, “not to self, do not piss Barry Allen off.”

Caitlin was also smiling, “nice dig, Barry, I didn’t know you had it in you,” she says. He wasn’t sure what, exactly, that was supposed to mean so he didn’t know if he should be offended by that or not.

“And what are we laughing about?” Harrison asks, wheeling in looking vaguely amused as usual.

“Barry set the Hood’s ass on blast and it was hilarious, wanna listen to a playback?” Cisco says excitedly.

“It wasn’t really that great,” Barry says, still irritated with the stupid Hood and his stupid comments about him being a stupid _child_ of all things. It shouldn’t get to him, he knows, because the Hood was a fucking nut case but it _does_ and he doesn’t know why he’s so hurt. It was stupid, he was being stupid, and he needed to get over himself. The Hood and his stupid opinions on Barry’s skills didn’t matter, especially when the Hood seemed to think it was acceptable to kill people. And that they _deserved it_.

Cisco plays it back anyways and Harrison’s eyebrows rise when Barry, as Cisco put it, set the Hood’s ass on blast. “Well done, Barry,” he says and Barry isn’t certain what, exactly, here was good but he took the compliment anyways. If he went back in time and told himself that he would have been accepting regular compliments from his science hero Harrison Wells he probably would have punched himself for being such an asshole and lying to him like that.

He ends up going home, still pissed off, but at least the damn roof of his apartment had finally been fixed so it stopped leaking. At home he flips on the news for the fuck of it and finds another story about the Hood, only this time he was in there too. Out of curiosity he continues to watch as the reporter describes Barry luring his latest foe out of the city, Harrison had informed him that he couldn’t stay in his gas form for long so all he had to do was outrun him until he had to stay together. He had done so, and as the reporter describes there hasn’t been a sighting of the gas guy since. Then she switches gears and describes how the streak (that was an awful name and he resented it) had shown up just in time to rescue Starling’s own resident hero, the Hood.

The general public opinion on him, and the Hood for that matter, seemed to be pretty good, but when the police are asked to comment Eddy takes the screen and informs everyone that the police weren’t fond of the first vigilante let alone the second. Barry shuts off the T.V and debates on going back to Starling to find the Hood and kick his ass for ruining Barry’s public image by association. All he’d done was save the guy, and contain a pretty huge threat considering gas wasn’t easily contained in the average cell, and now he got stuck with all the Hood’s baggage. Fucking great. He tries to occupy himself, he does, but eventually he decides just to go to bed so maybe he could sleep this off.

If he remembered his dreams he would have remembered dreaming about Oliver but he doesn’t. When he wakes up happy and feeling refreshed he assumes it was because he naturally a happy person, no Oliver involved.   


	5. Chapter 5

Tommy is frowning at him, “you ate Taco Bell?” he asks, looking confused.

“Yeah, I love Taco Bell,” Oliver says, looking just as confused with Tommy as Tommy did with him.

“You hate Taco Bell,” Tommy points out.

“No I don’t, I love Taco Bell,” he says.

“Not after you ate it drunk that one time and threw it all up, you can’t even stand the smell let alone the taste,” he says.

“Well I ate it so obviously that isn’t true. Besides, it’s not like it’s all that surprising that my tastes have changed over the last few years,” he says. Nothing shut people up faster than reminding them that he got ship wreaked on that island that one time.

“You hated Taco Bell yesterday Oliver,” Tommy says and shit, right, he did hate Taco Bell yesterday so why the hell would he… Barry must like Taco Bell.

“Barry has no fucking taste buds,” he decides. Tommy considers this for a second and he starts laughing, shaking his head at Oliver.

“Oh man I was worried about you for a second there. Gotta admit I was a bit thrown when your soul mate turned out to be a dude but I’m like eighty percent sure my soul mate is garlic bread so I figured I shouldn’t judge,” Tommy says and Oliver snorts.

“Movie theater popcorn,” he says and Tommy groans.

“Don’t make me choose, I can have more than one food soul mate,” he says.

“Greedy asshole,” Oliver accuses but Tommy gratefully takes his new title. Tommy had other motivations for wanting to talk to him but Oliver wasn’t a moron, he knew Tommy and Laurel were dating and had been trying to hide it from him for months. Laurel at least wasn’t terrible at it, she had figured out very quickly how to hide things due to her cop father, but Tommy was a subtle as a whale in a kiddie pool.

“So, uhh, I need to talk to you about something and if you could like… not hit me that would be super cool of you,” Tommy says.

“I know you and Laurel are dating, Tommy, you aren’t very good at being secretive about it. She seems happy with you, and you seem happy too. That’s what matters,” he says. Besides, he had never held any illusions that he and Laurel were going to last after Sarah even before the storm hit and he ended up shipwrecked. That was the point, he had gotten a bit too committed and he needed a damn good way to ruin it and Sarah was a _great_ way to destroy his relationship with Laurel. He was a real asshole then.

“Oh thank god, I figured if you were willing to strangle your soul mate you’d straight up murder me,” he says, looking relieved.

“Given that soul mates are some arbitrary social construction that, for some inexplicable reason, sit only around Westernized relationship ideals I don’t think you should put a lot of stock in my actions being related to my supposed connection to some random person,” he says.

Tommy looks confused and when Oliver realizes what he just said he was confused too, “Barry doesn’t believe in soul mates? Who the hell doesn’t believe in soul mates? How does he explain all the dreams and cravings and stuff? Does he _know_?” Tommy asks.

“I… actually I don’t think so. He doesn’t remember his dreams at all, which I really wish he would because he’s much easier to talk to when I’m asleep, and sleep him is on board with the soul mate thing. He’s very contradictory,” Oliver says, “I think he might have adopted some of my tastes though. He called me a Disney villain for not liking nachos but he’s probably labeled that a coincidence.”

Tommy, the absolute asshole, laughs at him, “he actually called you a Disney villain?” he asks.

“Yes, he said, and this is a quote, ‘what kind of Disney villain doesn’t like nachos?’ Stop laughing Tommy, it isn’t funny, I don’t want to be a Disney villain,” Oliver says, an edge of desperation coloring his tone and Tommy, the asshole, laughs harder.

“I like this guy,” he says, “because that’s hilarious.”

“When your soul mate calls you a Disney villain I’ll laugh at you too,” Oliver tells him grumpily.

“I don’t think Laurel would call me a Disney villain,” Tommy says off hand and the smile drops off his face when he realizes what he just said.

“How did the two of you figure that out?” he asks because he was genuinely interested. Laurel had been totally convinced _he_ was her soul mate but Tommy, from what he’s seen of the two, made far more sense than him.

Tommy seems to be gauging his reaction but he wasn’t mad about it, it wasn’t as if he had a right to be mad at anything Laurel did after what he had done to her. “I ugh… we… um… slept together shortly after you crashed, we thought you were dead!” he says, putting his hands up in surrender even though he didn’t need to, “and then she said something about still craving food you liked, except whatever she said she was craving was something you didn’t like. I can’t remember what it was now. Anyways when you two met I was with you and then you were the one who hit on her and I just didn’t say anything because she seemed happy. Also apparently her dreams were from my point of view so for the longest time she assumed you were her soul mate because we’re together so much that you were almost always in my field of vision so,” Tommy says, shrugging.

Wow, that made _so much_ sense. Oliver hadn’t felt much of anything with Laurel and frankly he only kept her around for something to do, which was horrible of him. It had sort of always felt like he was going through the motions rather than actually being engaged in the relationship so he hadn’t understood her attachment to him whatsoever. Well, he had _cared_ but not in the way everyone else expected him to or thought he did, he had just been selfish in stringing her along for his own benefit until he had no use for her. “Now I get why she thought I was her soul mate, I knew it wasn’t true and honestly I had no clue where she was pulling that from but our tastes are similar too so I can see why she’d confuse the two of us. Also I’m the better looking one so obviously she’d choose me,” he says, grinning at Tommy.

He gets punched in the arm for that but Tommy laughs, “you are not the better looking one,” he says.

“I am too, that’s why you always got sloppy seconds,” he says.

“I did not get your sloppy seconds, that’s just rude,” Tommy says even though he knows it’s true, even his soul mate was Oliver’s ex. Poor Tommy.

“Do so, you’ve slept with like basically everyone I have, and always after me,” he points out, “except the guys but in your defense I made an effort to hide that I slept with them so it’s not like you knew you left out a few,” he says.

Tommy looks so damn excited and honestly he didn’t understand Tommy’s investment in his sex life, “oh my god who, anyone I know, you have to tell me now. I can’t believe you left out details you asshole!” he says. Why he thought Tommy would give a flying fuck about his bisexuality he had no clue because all Tommy cared about was details of his hoeing.

Oliver rolls his eyes fondly but tells Tommy about the left out experiences just because it was fun to watch his reactions to Oliver’s stories.

*

“Are you drinking coffee?” Iris asks, looking at the cup he was holding in confusion. She had managed to get a job as a reporter and today was one of her days off, hence the two of them getting together.

Barry shrugs, “I’m tired,” he mumbles, “caffeine will wake me up.” He had had a nightmare last night, not that he remembered what it was about, because his stupid ass forgot to take one of those sedatives.

Iris looks concerned, “Barry you hate coffee… wait, is that coffee black? I think you need to make a doctor’s appointment because there is obviously something wrong with you,” she says.

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” he grumbles, irritated. Usually he was a morning person but today… today he woke up and his first instinct was to murder his downstairs neighbor for daring to make any noise before noon. He had ended up falling back asleep until just before he was supposed to meet Iris. Thankfully he could run at inhuman speeds so it hadn’t taken him long to get himself together and go.

“Oh Barry you don’t look like you’re feeling very well,” Iris says, “are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.

He doesn’t bother to respond, instead he continues drinking his coffee and Iris goes off to order her own drink. By the time she returns he feels less like the walking dead and Iris had brought him a caramel frappuccino, probably in an attempt to make him feel better. “Ugh, what is _that_?” he asks, pushing the drink away from him, “who even drinks those stupid frou-frou things?” he asks.

Iris looks confused, “you, all the time, it’s your favorite- oh my god this must be that switching tastes things soul mates do, Oliver doesn’t like caramel frappuccinos!” she says, far more excited than she should be.

“Oliver doesn’t like nachos. Oliver hates fun,” he mumbles.

“Who the hell doesn’t like nachos?” Iris asks.

“Oliver. Because he’s a defective human,” Barry says, taking another sip of his coffee.

“You at least look a little better, are you feeling better?” she asks, genuinely concerned for him.

Barry yawns and stretches a bit, “well I feel a little less like death warmed over,” he says and eyes the frappuccino for a second before deciding that this was not some stupid soul mate thing, it was a weird fluke, and even if it was a soul mate thing Oliver had bad taste. Thankfully his love of frappuccinos went nowhere and he thanks Iris and asks about her new job. Iris hated her boss, apparently he was a pompous asshole, but the job itself was nice aside being irritated with being stuck with the Hood stories.

He sympathized because the Hood was a fucking asshole of epic proportions and Barry hoped he fell off a roof and into a dumpster where he belonged. Well, maybe not, or at least if he didn’t get hurt but still, Barry didn’t like the guy at all. Iris asks about him and he tells her about work, which was more of the same it has always been, and he neglects to tell her about basically being a superhero. They chat for a while before Iris’ ‘demon boss’ called and she had to go.

On his way out he runs straight into someone and almost bounces off but the other person steadies him, “sorry,” a familiar voice says and he finds Oliver there. At least he was smart enough to promptly drop his arm and step away, which was a definite improvement over the last few interactions they’ve had.

“It’s fine,” Barry mumbles and he goes to move around Oliver because he had no interest in talking to him.

“Hey Barry,” Oliver says and he turns around, “are you a morning person?” he asks, looking generally confused.

“Yeah, I get up at seven thirty like clockwork,” he says, minus today, though his being a morning person did nothing to get him to work on time. For the life of him he couldn’t get up before seven thirty and he had to work at eight, which meant on average he was at least twenty minutes late every day. Lately it was only ten minutes given his newfound ability to run at shockingly high speeds and his boss, who was also a demon in disguise, was impressed. Barely. More like passively aggressively happy that Barry was ‘almost on time’ now. “How late do you get up?” he asks because he was curious.

Oliver shrugs, “late usually. Imagine my surprise when I woke up at seven thirty and I was energized. I never want it to happen again,” he says and walks into the coffee shop. Well that made two of them pissed off about their change in sleep habits. Barry takes his cue and turns around, discovering the reason Iris had chosen a coffee shop so far from where she worked and lived. Queen Consolidated sat barely a block away and of _course_ he’d run into Oliver here. Typical. It wasn’t even like he could be mad at him either; it wasn’t Oliver’s fault Iris was trying to subtly set them up by making sure they were in the same area. At least Oliver had the good sense to walk away before he inevitably did something creepy or weird.

*

He would have stuck around longer, really, but he thought that maybe his mom did have a point about giving Barry some breathing room so he leaves him be. On the plus side his mother was impressed that he managed to show up to work sometime before three, which was usually when he go there. Granted that was because he had no idea what to do with so much of the day when he usually spent that part of the day sleeping. Felicity had been impressed too, enough to buy him coffee even though she had vowed to never, ever, bring him coffee.

His next goal was to get Thea interested in the family business.

Hell, who was he kidding, that was never going to happen. She was far more interested in his club so he figured he might as well make it boring as hell for her and put her in charge of stocking stuff. It turned out she was actually really good at it though so that was something of a happy accident. He brings coffee for Felicity back to Queen Consolidated to make up for this morning and all the other times he got weird and she just went with it. She was a great friend, really, and she at least tried to give him advice on Barry.

The two of them spend the rest of the day messaging each other back and forth about comics; it turned out Felicity had a wealth of knowledge there, rather than actually doing stuff. He was probably going to get another one of those disappointed looks from his mother but he was bored and office work had never suited him, even now. If he didn’t feel obligated to the company he would have gotten rid of it because it was more trouble than it was worth. Unfortunately for him he was expected to take over because he was the oldest even though he was positive that Thea would do a better job of it. She had all the skills even if she was currently acting like an immature jackass. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done the same.

For the first time in a long time he decides to go out because he had had a long day and honestly he needed a drink. Felicity offers her company but he declines because he wanted some time to himself. He wasn’t entirely sure what he had been looking for but it sure as hell hadn’t been Barry and he wasn’t sure what looked creepier, his presence in a bar he didn’t think Barry would go anywhere near or leaving right after Barry had noticed him there. When Barry starts towards him he figures it would be best to stay there and face the music.

“I’d say I’m not stalking you but the fact that I’d have to open with that would indicate that I am, in fact, stalking you. Which I’m not, just to be clear,” he says.

Barry shrugs, “didn’t really think you were actually, this isn’t exactly a place either of us would frequent. From what I’ve read you prefer clubs and you own one of those and I’m doing research,” he says. He doesn’t quite look like he believes that and that was fair, after all why would Oliver be here if this wasn’t the kind of place he’d normally frequent if not to stalk Barry?

“I wanted to go somewhere no one would know me, that eliminated all of Starling and this is far from anywhere I figured you’d be so I thought here would be a good place to drink without looking like I was stalking you. I was not right,” he says. Barry considers his answer and Oliver can tell he’s still suspicious, reasonably so, so he offers to leave. It was only fair, he was technically in Barry’s city, it was only right for him to go. Also maybe it would make him seem like less of a creep. Probably not, at this point their constantly running into one another was getting weird to him; it had to be far weirder to Barry.

Barry considers his offer before relaxing some, thank god, and sitting in the chair opposite of him, “honestly at this point you’re better company than the company I brought,” he says.

“Yikes,” Oliver says because out of four encounters he physically assaulted Barry once, essentially tried controlling his life in another, and kind of looked like he was stalking them in the rest. Whomever he was with must be truly awful. The only saving grace to this, Oliver thinks, is that if Barry had gone out on a date with someone he certainly wasn’t interested in them now. Which was the way it should be but he doesn’t say that because that sounded creepy in his head, it would sound far worse out loud.

Barry looks pained, “yeah,” he says. They probably would have lapsed into an extremely uncomfortable silence after that but thankfully Barry’s friend, date, whatever, decides to interrupt.

“Barry,” a very drunk girl on stage all but yells. Oliver and Barry both wince, “come up here and sing a song with me,” she says, using the microphone as a cane to keep her upright. Barry looks like he’d rather get shipwrecked on an island and frankly Oliver would too and he’s been shipwrecked on an island before. He shakes his head and the girl sighs loudly, “oh come one, Barry, Barry, Barry!” she says and everyone else joins in too and Barry sighs standing up to go on stage much to everyone’s glee.

“Don’t drug my drink,” he tells Oliver and hops onto the stage, catching the girl who all but throws herself at him.

He decides he hates her.

*

 Caitlin was _wasted_ and Barry was sad and annoyed because, as they had discovered some week or so ago, his increased metabolism meant he couldn’t get drunk. He hated superpowers. It spoke to just how bored and annoyed he was that when he sees Oliver he decides to go over and talk to the guy. He wasn’t overly thrilled that Oliver decides to open with a line about not stalking him, which was way creepy, but Oliver at least realizes that this time. He still had his doubts but when he and Oliver happened to make eye contact Oliver had looked genuinely surprised and then he had looked around for an escape so. He probably wasn’t being stalked. Maybe. Hopefully. Oliver _did_ offer to leave at least so that was promising right?

Just when he assumed his night couldn’t get any worse than a painfully awkward conversation with Oliver Caitlin decides that he _must_ sing. He tells Oliver not to drug his drink and slinks off to the stage in hopes that maybe he could talk Caitlin into going home after this. He didn’t even remember what they were supposed to be looking for and poor Caitlin was just trying to have a social life. Caitlin all but throws herself at him and he catches her before they both took a trip off the stage and rights her a little before gently nudging her back over to her own microphone.

Over the brightness of the lights he can just see Oliver’s face and _oh_ he did not look very happy with Caitlin. They were definitely leaving after this if for no other reason than Barry not wanting poor Caitlin to get strangled too.

He hadn’t much expected Caitlin to be good, really, but he hadn’t expected her to be quite as horrible as she was. He, at least, wasn’t a totally horrible singer so the poor patrons of the bar didn’t suffer completely and thankfully the song went by fast. Caitlin doesn’t stumble too badly off the stage though she does announce, loudly, that she was going to the bathroom to throw up. Yeah, Barry didn’t blame her, he’d be ready to throw up if he had drank as much as her and didn’t have a super-fast metabolism too.

He considers his options but ultimately he decides to wander back over to Oliver and his drink, checking the time on his phone as he does so. “You can sing,” he says when Barry sits, setting his phone on the table. He looks impressed and Barry decides that Oliver had low standards.

“Not that well,” he says. He was mediocre at best but at least when he was singing in the shower Joe didn’t mistake him for a cat dying like he did with Iris. Well, now the cat was actually dead so he knew it was Iris, but before he thought it was the cat. And it was the dog before that.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” a new voice says, “that was some of the best ‘tunes I’ve heard in here,” the woman says and she looks vaguely familiar but Barry can’t place where he had seen her before.

His stupid body up and betrays him by blushing and he ducks his head, “well Caitlin set a pretty low standard, to be fair,” he says. He sees Oliver shift uncomfortably out of the corner of his eye but the woman doesn’t pay him any attention whatsoever.

“Girlfriend?” she asks coyly.

Barry laughs, “oh my god no, we’re just friends,” he says, his blush growing brighter.

The woman grins and Oliver shifts uncomfortably again, “well there’s this new app, that’s pretty cool, all you have to do it tap someone’s phone and it gives them all of your information,” she says and taps his phone with hers, “like that,” she says as his phone lights up with her information.

“That’s a great way for a stalker to get your information without even trying,” Oliver says and frankly Barry was shocked he remained silent this long.

“Ugh, okay?” the woman, Linda if her information was correct, says and walks off, waving and winking at Barry as she goes.

He glares at Oliver, who shrugs, “it’s not my fault I’m right,” he says.

Barry snorts, “well you’d know,” he says in a snarky tone and he feels sort of bad when Oliver winces. He picks up his phone and grins, “this sort of thing never happens to me. Nice,” he says, pocketing his phone before Oliver got any ideas.

Oliver mumbles something but when Barry asks him to repeat it he says it wasn’t important and he all but flees the scene. Barry didn’t have time to feel bad because Caitlin returns and he was stuck caring for his drunk friend.

*

He was half tempted to kill off Linda Park but that reached epic levels of creepy and irrational so he steers clear. But Barry had looked far more interested in her than him and to make matters worse apparently that sort of thing never happened to Barry. Of course it didn’t, why would it unless Oliver was there to get his nose rubbed in it. He had mumbled, “here’s to hoping it never happens again,” out loud by accident but thankfully Barry didn’t hear it so he makes a stupid excuse and leaves.

The night air was chilly and he wasn’t even buzzed and now he wanted to get blackout drunk so he calls Tommy because he was always happy to go to a good party. Thankfully Laurel wasn’t around to tell him that was a stupid idea, because it was, and Tommy picks him up within twenty minutes. He climbs in the passenger seat and grins, “remember when I came back and you said I haven’t had sex in like… a stupid amount of days? I think it’s time to rectify that,” he says and Tommy grins.

“Hell yeah, man!” he says enthusiastically and peels out of the parking lot. He knew Oliver was upset, he always knew when Oliver was upset but he doesn’t ask about it. Tommy never pushed him, he always let Oliver come to him and that was why he loved Tommy so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who might be wondering how the end of this chapter is going to factor into Oliver's touch sensitivity that comes up later, don't worry. That didn't just... go away.


	6. Chapter 6

Oliver wakes up with a wicked hangover next to someone that looked sort of familiar if he squinted and now he remembered why he stopped with the one night stands. They always made him feel like shit and he had dreamt of Barry so he felt even more like a scum bag than usual. To make matters worse his vision was blurry and the room was spinning still. He sighs and gets up and pads to the bathroom down the hall even though he had his own just to avoid running into whoever the hell was in his bed when they woke up.

He doesn’t expect to run into someone along the way but he does, “are you doing the walk of shame in your own house? Dude, you do that when you walk home, not when you’re _in_ your home,” he says. Oliver pins the kid with a glare that would make lesser men run, he knew, because it has, but the kid doesn’t even flinch. He liked him already.

“And you are?” he asks, jamming as much condescension into his tone as he could.

Again the kid doesn’t even flinch, “Thea’s boyfriend, Roy,” he says and sticks his hand out.

Oliver gives him an appraising look and extends his own hand somewhat hesitantly though he was certain Roy would misread the reasons as to why that was. He could kill him if he needed to, “well then, mind explaining what you’re doing here so early?” he asks with Roy’s hand still in his grip, full well knowing the answer. Unfortunately for him Barry’s stupid assed sleeping patterns had not gone away. They could any time now.

Roy laughs, “you’re not a moron man, put two and two together,” he says and Oliver changed his mind, this kid was a total idiot and he was going to kick his ass. He pulls Roy closer, he still had a grip on Roy’s hand, but the kid doesn’t look the slightest bit worried. “You can kick my ass all you want man, but you’re the one doing the walk of shame, not Thea, and I intend to keep it that way,” he says in a tone that was far braver than most would have managed. Usually by now they were begging for their lives and Oliver hadn’t even done anything.

He releases Roy and he takes a step back, “also out of the two of you Thea is the one that I find more frightening, little impulsive, but she’s vicious when she want to be, you’re just a blunt instrument,” he says and _excuse him_? Roy disappears before Oliver can properly rectify the kid’s opinions though. He stands there stupidly for a few seconds before heading off to the bathroom to scrub the scummy feeling he had off his skin knowing he wouldn’t be successful at all.

*

Barry wakes up at like three in the afternoon and all he can do is stare at the clock in shock. Who the hell slept this late? How the hell did Oliver get anything done? What the _fuck_? He checks his phone to find a bunch of missed texts from Caitlin, Cisco, Iris, and Joe, and the latter two had called twice each. He decides to call Joe back first because he’d be sure to text Iris that Barry wasn’t dead.

“Barry, thank god, are you okay?” he asks, sounding slightly panicked.

“Yeah I’m fine, I just woke up,” he says and he can practically hear Joe’s shock.

“Barry it’s three in the afternoon, how is it possible that you could have slept this late?” he asks.

He sighs and pulls himself out of bed feeling sore and sad, “no idea but if Iris’ ranting is to believed she’d probably think that I’ve somehow gotten stuck with Oliver’s sleeping patterns,” he says.

Joe snorts, “well that’s hardly surprising then,” he says and mumbles something that sounded suspiciously like ‘lazy party boy’ under his breath.

“In his slight defense he doesn’t really party that much anymore,” Barry says because it was true and Oliver should at least get _some_ credit where it was due. That was like the only credit there was to be due.

“You haven’t seen Starling’s morning news,” Joe says and now Barry was curious but he refrains from checking anything until he has assured all his friends that he was not, in fact, dead. Caitlin informs him that _she_ was the dead one if anything. Fair enough, she had been very, very drunk the night before.

After he was done with that he gets to Starling’s news only to feel inexplicably betrayed by the picture of Oliver looking very much like he had in previous news stories of him. Drunk, surrounded by people, and doing something that was undoubtedly irresponsible. He slams his laptop shut and storms off to the bathroom pissed off at Oliver and pissed off at himself for being pissed off at Oliver because it shouldn’t matter. It _didn’t_ matter. Why the hell did he even care anyways? He shouldn’t care, he _didn’t_ care. He was just being stupid.

*

“ _What_ ,” his mother hisses, “is _this_?” she asks, slamming this morning’s newspaper on the table. It wasn’t anything new so he didn’t know why she was so pissed off about it.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” he says flippantly and Moira slams her hand on the table again, drawing his attention for real this time because this was not characteristic of her.

“You had better have a good explanation for this,” she says through her teeth.

Oliver shrugs, “not really, I went and did something shamelessly stupid just like I always do, I don’t get why you care, you didn’t before,” he says and goes to leave but his mother had other plans.

“Oliver Queen you sit your sorry ass down,” she yells and he drops back into his seat, shocked into compliance. “This might have been cute and excusable five years ago but now you are plenty old enough to know when you’re acting like a jackass for no reason. I understand that you’re upset about Barry, I do, but this is not you doing something stupid because that’s what you do, this is you reverting back to unhealthy habits and feeling sorry for yourself because that’s easier than dealing with it. So here’s what you’re going to do Oliver, you’re going to go upstairs and get dressed and escort whoever it is you brought home out politely. Then you’re going to go to Barry’s and politely ask to talk to him, in public seems how you were stupid enough to attack him the first time you met so now he feels unsafe in your presence, and you’re going to deal with this like a big boy. Do _not_ interrupt me, Oliver, I will not deal with two out of control children when one of them has no business acting that way given that his situation is his own damn fault. Now go,” she snaps, waving him off.

“He isn’t going to listen,” Oliver starts but his mom cuts him off.

“And whose fault is that, Oliver? I don’t give a damn whether or not he agrees, you either work things out or you graciously accept that he wants nothing to do with you like a mature adult. You do _not_ get to go back to your old habits, you’ve outgrown them, and I will _not_ have another incident that leaves you stranded on some unmarked island. Now go and deal with your problems like a proper adult,” she says, waving him off again before brushing her hair away from her face. Her hand is shaking and Oliver suddenly feels horrible for worrying her. Of course she would worry about him, especially when this was the behavior that had half influenced what resulted in the death of his father and his being stranded. Shit.

He silently leaves the room, fully prepared to follow his mother’s instructions. “Nice going, big brother,” Thea says as he leaves the room, smirking at him.

“Oh I’ve got a lecture for you too, Thea, so sit down,” Moira snaps and Thea doesn’t look so happy anymore.

“Haha,” Oliver says because he just couldn’t resist. It was what siblings did.

“ _Oliver_!” Moira yells and he starts moving faster. He doesn’t get to hear Thea’s lecture and that kind of makes him sad but he didn’t really want to incur his mother’s wrath again. On the plus side his one night stand turned out to be a very hungover Tommy so he must not have done something too stupid. He lets Tommy explain on his way out.  

*

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting but when Barry opens the door he goes from looking minorly irritated to infuriated, “you,” Barry snarls with more venom than Oliver thought him capable of, “get out,” he snarls through clenched teeth. Oliver was so shocked he didn’t even point out that he wasn’t in anywhere. Well, the hallway but that hardly counted as Barry’s home.

“I, uh, okay,” he says, taking a step back from the anger that seemed to be falling off Barry in waves.

“I cannot _believe_ you!” Barry yells and wow, okay, it would be really nice to know what he did wrong. If this was about anything he’d already done he figured Barry would have said something sooner so this much be new.

“I-” he starts but Barry wasn’t really interested in what he had to say.

“What is _wrong_ with you!” he yells and this time he’s actually expecting a response.

“I, um, to be honest the list of things that aren’t wrong with me would probably be shorter,” he says. Barry glares at him for a moment before they’re both distracted by Barry’s neighbors’ door opening and a little old lady sticks her head out.

“ _What_ did you do to little Barry Allen to get him to yell at you?” she says in a disappointed tone that only a frail old woman could manage.

Oliver raises an eyebrow at Barry, “little Barry Allen?” he asks.

“Oh shut up, Gladys,” Barry snaps and okay, he must have woken up a short time ago if he was so irritable, assuming he was following Oliver’s sleep patterns still. The old woman, bless her, looks shocked that Barry would ever say such a thing let alone to her.

“When did you wake up?” he asks gently, hoping Barry wouldn’t react badly. Knowing his own patterns made this both easier and more difficult because one of two things was about to happen. One, Barry reacts just fine and gives him an answer because he was gentle about asking. Or two, Barry would bite his fucking head off because he wasn’t a child and he didn’t need people to be gentle with him.

Yeah, he was a real asshole in the morning.

“Like an hour ago,” he snaps, apparently going for halfway in between the two responses.

Oliver nods, “yeah, you’re going to be useless for the next hour,” he says, “want food?” he asks because he was not sticking around to incur Barry’s wrath for the next hour before he finally woke the hell up. There was a reason he avoided human contact for the first few hours after waking up.

“No I don’t want food, I want you to jump off a bridge,” Barry snaps.

“Okay, I’ll go get food. And coffee,” he says, fleeing before Barry said something else he didn’t mean. If he didn’t want Oliver around when he came back he’d go but for now Barry was just angry at everything for no reason the way Oliver was in the morning.

“That is _not_ what I said,” Barry yells at him as he goes before slamming his door shut.

Gladys is still poking her head outside her door when Barry retreats into his apartment, “is he sick?” she asks.

Oliver sighs, “no, he’s my soul mate and he appears to have absorbed my bad morning habits,” he says.

Gladys looks unimpressed, “well you’re a terrible person and Barry deserves better,” the old lady snaps, slamming the door shut after one final glare. Wow, even the old lady thought Barry deserved better.

She wasn’t wrong.

*

When Oliver returns Barry is _so_ embarrassed about the way he acted. He didn’t even know why he was so angry and Oliver didn’t deserve that. “I am so, _so_ , sorry,” he says when he opens the door, half covering his face with his hand.

Oliver shrugs, “no need to apologize, I know my morning habits well. Avoid humanity for two hours, minimum, otherwise everything in your path goes down. It isn’t pretty and trust me, I’ve tried not to be an asshole but it’s hard so I gave up and decided to quarantine myself until I was ready to not be an absolute dickhead,” he says.

“Well that’s promising,” Barry says, now worried about the rest of Oliver’s behavior.

He gets a tight lipped smile in response, which was obviously due to Oliver realizing the implications of his words, “it’s probably the only behavior I’ve had that I’ve never been able to change,” he says.

“Great, because if you’re expecting any of this to work at all I’d suggest changing basically everything,” Barry says, still a little short on niceties.

Oliver sighs but seems to accept his fate, “I brought coffee,” he says, “so if nothing else you get a free drink.” Barry sighs and stretches a little, grabbing a cup out of Oliver’s hand and gesturing to the couch he had been previously seething on before coming to the conclusion that he was acting like a petulant child for no reason.

They sit in silence for a good twenty minutes before Oliver decides to break the tension. If Barry was honest he wanted to make Oliver suffer in the most passive aggressive way possible but he decides to stop that when Oliver speaks. It wouldn’t really do to be an asshole if Oliver was at least trying to straighten out his… _worrying_ behavior. He’d at least give the guy a chance, singular, to not be a creep. It wasn’t like he couldn’t outrun the guy if necessary, he could outrun anyone now.

“I… ugh, sorry for being an ass after you woke up from that coma, it probably should have occurred to me that you have thoughts and feelings,” he says and _wow_ that was a bad opening line. But Felicity did warn him Oliver was painfully bad at all things human so he’d at least try to see what the hell that might have meant, assuming he wasn’t supposed to take that at face value.

“ _That’s_ the incident you chose to apologize for?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I didn’t really think an apology would make up for physical assault,” Oliver says and that was a surprisingly good answer.

“Okay, fair enough. So back to the not considering I had thoughts and feelings, I’m sure even you can figure out how that sounds,” he says. God damn creepy was how that sounded.

Oliver sighs and flops back against the couch, “yeah I know. I just… I’m just so used to being on my own or in situations where I’m the unquestionable leader. I’m usually the one organizing and controlling everything, mostly because I have some pretty intense control issues, so when I met you you were just another thing I had to organize and control the way I have with everything else for the better part of the last decade,” he says, “which isn’t meant to excuse my behavior, I just didn’t think and that was stupid of me.”

Barry makes a face, “please tell me you are aware how insane that is,” he asks because that was even worse than Oliver’s sorry excuse for an apology.

“Until you pointed it out, well, technically the long haired friend of yours, no, which I am well aware is embarrassing at best and abusive at worst. I don’t even know why it didn’t occur to me that you would have thoughts and feelings, that’s a no brainer. I just thought for some stupid reason that if I organized everything in your life for you without your knowledge or consent you wouldn’t care? I don’t know, it makes no sense and I wouldn’t like that so I have no clue why I thought you wouldn’t care,” he says, at least looking properly ashamed of his actions.

“And now?” Barry asks.

“And now… what?” Oliver asks.

“Are you aware that I have thoughts and feelings that you’re _going_ to consider now?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Oliver laughs, “oh I might be wrapped up in my own head far too much of the time but I’d have to be a special kind of obtuse to miss that you are, indeed, a person with thoughts and feelings considering how much you voice them. Not that that’s a bad thing,” he says, “frankly that’s for the best considering my past actions.”

“Do you do that with anyone else in your life? Try to control them?” he asks because at this point he still wasn’t seeing much here to salvage.

Oliver shakes his head, “no, and that’s where I’m lost because I don’t do that with anyone else. It’s never even occurred to me to try and control someone emotionally so I don’t why you’re any different,” he says, looking confused.

“Because I’m your soul mate, which means I’m your other half, which means controlling me is basically controlling you and you do that all the time so it’s normal,” Barry says. He’s had a lot of time to reflect on the situation and he hoped he was right, this would go a lot faster if he was given that Oliver’s own emotions were lost on him.

Oliver blinks a few times, his eyebrows drawing together, “I… yeah, actually, that sounds right, well not right but… I’m sure you knew what I meant. How… how the hell did you know that when I didn’t?” he asks.

Barry shrugs, “I’ve spent the last month and a half dealing with a bunch of people excusing you’re considerably worrying behaviors because you’re supposed to complete me or something, and let me be clear here, I am _not_ your other half. I am a whole person on my own thank you very much and you are not, nor will you ever be, necessary to my survival or my happiness. I’ve lived my whole life thus far without you and I can live the rest of it without you too, you are not vital for me to live; you are not some organ I can’t live without. That doesn’t mean that having a relationship with you won’t bring me any sort of happiness or joy or whatever, but contrary to popular opinion you do not complete me because I was never incomplete. It _really_ annoys me that everyone else seems to think that I am. If that wasn’t irritating enough then they all go and act as if your abusive behavior is actually some misguided attempt at being protective and that is… that’s just _wrong_ ,” he says, voice colored with distaste and annoyance.

Oliver frowns, thinking that over and looking generally very confused, which didn’t bode well until he spoke. “Your friends, or whoever else decided it was a good idea to tell you that my behavior was normal, do they not know how abuse cycles work? Because by all means strangling someone, then trying to tell them how to live followed by being generally pleasant and respectful fits the abuse cycle perfectly. You have way more than enough reason to be worried, not to mention thirty percent of all homicides are soul mates killing each other, that’s a really high number. Statistically speaking this meeting will end in your death,” he says and his eyes grow wide when he realizes what he just said, “I’m not planning on killing you like… ever. Just to be clear,” he says.

Barry laughs, “I figured if you wanted me dead you probably would have tried to kill me off by now, not that I’m overly worried about that anyways. It isn’t like you’d manage,” he says, “but on the plus side you at least seem to be aware of how messed up your behavior has been.” Granted it took Barry pointing it out for him to realize, which was still worrying, but at least Oliver seemed to fully understand how his behavior affected Barry and he didn’t try to excuse it either. That alone was a step up from pretty much everyone else in his life aside from Oliver’s own mother, which was beyond sad.

“Have all of your friends seriously dismissed your worries?” he asks, looking surprised and a little disgusted.

“Except for you mom and Caitlin yeah,” he says.

“Oh don’t put any stock in whatever my mom told you, she was playing you and apparently you fell for it,” he says.

“ _What_?” Barry asks, mostly offended but also a little surprised.

“Yeah, I love her but she’s a business woman before anything else and she’s incredibly good at manipulating people, she has to be to survive in her occupation. Essentially she made me seem more desirable by simultaneously validating your worries about me, making an ally out of herself, and humanizing me by spilling all my embarrassing childhood stories. Which, by the way, bees _are_ chillers until you destroy their home and then they get understandably upset so I was technically right about that. But if I were you I wouldn’t trust anything my mom says because chances are she has an ulterior motive and she is more than good at getting what she wants,” Oliver says and Barry was straight up frightened.

“What the fuck is _wrong_ with your family?” he asks, hand pressed to his heart.

“Do you really want an itemized list of all the things that are wrong with the Queen family?” Oliver asks.

“At this point I think it would be best for my own health to know,” he says, upset that he’d been played by Oliver’s mother.

Oliver takes a deep breath, “wow okay, where to start. You know what I’m just going to start with Thea’s cocaine problem,” he says.

“ _What_?”

*

Oliver’s family was so screwed up it rivaled Barry’s and everyone thought his father killed his mother so that was saying something. He did, at least, get a crash course in Moira Queen and Oliver seemed to be considerably knowledgeable on the ways in which she got people to do what she wanted. Oliver’s family dynamic didn’t exactly give Barry confidence that Oliver could unlearn how not to be a savage but Oliver’s awareness of how unhealthy some of the dynamics were at least gave him a little hope.

“So,” Barry says as Oliver is about to go, “last night, what was that, exactly?” he asks because he was curious if that had anything to do with him at all.

Oliver sighs, “last night was a fucking disaster, I don’t even remember most of it but according to Tommy I got really drunk and then had a panic attack because I’m not very good with touch and well, we were in a club. Only Tommy forgot about that particular detail because he was drunk too so after trying to calm me down by rubbing my back failed he called Felicity because he was pretty sure I was dying and she reminded him that touching me was literally the last thing he should have done. Anyway we somehow made it back to my place and passed out in my bed, which I don’t remember because I drank way too much. I assumed I went and did something stupid and slept with some random person when I woke up but it turned out it was Tommy, who is usually a cuddler but apparently every time he got close to me I hit him in my sleep so he learned to stay in his side of the bed. Now I feel like an asshole for sleep beating my best friend and upsetting everyone else,” he says.

Barry takes that all in because _wow_ , he didn’t expect that level of detail, “that was a wild ride from start to finish,” he says, “why the hell would you go to a club if you’re sensitive to touch?” he asks.

“I forgot,” he mumbles and Barry squints at him in disbelief.

“You own a club, you know how crowded they get, and even if you somehow missed that how do you forget you’re sensitive to touch? Seems like the kind of thing you wouldn’t forget,” he says.

“I, uh, was preoccupied, I’m sure you can guess why. And it isn’t the sort of thing I’d forget, it’s why everyone who isn’t me deals with the people part of the club. Plus, well, I’ve never been known to make the best of decisions regarding my own health. But I’m fine, Tommy’s mostly fine, and the media only caught wind of the first half of the night, before I freaked out, so there’s that,” he says.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Barry says, “because that is just terrible. You can’t just go off and do stupid things like that because you’re upset that someone hit on me. That literally never happens so the good news is that it’ll probably never happen again.”

Oliver smiles, “so you’re not throwing me to the curb?” he asks.

“Not yet, but you are nowhere near off the hook so don’t think everything is going to be sunshine and roses now. I’m willing to at least try to see what the hell the universe was thinking in pairing us, even if I think the soul mate thing is stupid, but only if you can manage to not be a creep,” he says.

Oliver looks relieved, “oh thank god, I’m not going to make promises because I’m terrible at keeping them but I’ll do my best to not freak you out. Or strangle you. Again,” he says, looking slightly pained.         


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a brief note, Oliver will help Barry with his issues too, later, but right now I deemed Oliver more important. So no worries, Oliver gets his time to shine! lol

The next time Barry runs into the Hood he’s in Central trying to deal with some asshole from Starling who had been robbing banks. “ _You_ ,” they say in sync, glaring at each other. Well, Barry assumed the Hood was glaring because he couldn’t actually see past the guy’s jawline.

“Go home,” they say to each other, still in sync. “No,” they say together, “you leave.”

Barry was only minorly disturbed that he and the Hood were freakishly in sync but that was only because he was mostly pissed off at the guy. “This is _my_ city so _you_ get out of it,” Barry snaps, using some basic logic.

“This one is from _my_ city and I was nice enough to come here and clean up this mess so go home and watch Netflix for kids,” the Hood snaps, his voice altered by something Barry couldn’t see.

“Well we’ve established that I’m better at cleaning up my own messes so go home and take your lame insults with you,” Barry snaps back. Cisco was saying something in his ear but he wasn’t listening because he was busy being annoyed with this Hood.

“Beginners luck,” the Hood says, somehow managing to make that sound extremely condescending even with an altered voice.

“As if. Besides, everyone knows old dogs can’t learn new tricks so obviously _I’m_ the more adaptable one,” he says.

The Hood turns to face him entirely, “I am _not_ old,” he says.

“Are so or you wouldn’t be offended,” Barry says logically.

“ _Barry_ ,” Cisco yells in his ear, “would you stop arguing with the Hood and do something? There are hostages in there,” he says and _shit,_ right, he had people to save. He elects to ignore the Hood and he runs down to the front of the bank only to almost get shot by both the guy robbing the bank _and_ the Hood. He dodges the bullets, and the Hood’s arrow, only to have the Hood land just out of sight range from the guy robbing the bank not far from Barry himself.

“If you knew anything you would have at least _tried_ to stay out of that guy’s sightline. Let’s hope to hostages aren’t the next thing this guy shoots at,” the Hood grumbles before examining the door for a second and shooting an arrow at it, which Barry didn’t think would do anything until the damn thing explodes, lock included.

Barry runs in and starts removing the hostages while the Hood distracts the gunman because there was no way he’d be able to move fast enough to save everyone. Once everyone was out, safely thanks to Barry being faster than bullets and the Hood’s stupidity, he rushes back in to clean up the Hood’s mess. He finds the Hood standing with an arrow leveled at the guy’s head, one arrow already stuck in the robber’s knee and another in his shoulder, “what the _hell_?” he asks just as the Hood lets the next arrow fly. He catches it easily but just about gets shot by another arrow the Hood must have let go while he was rushing to catch the first arrow. “What the _hell_?” he asks again, quickly gathering the robber and depositing him in the hospital and a note as to his whereabouts in the police station before rushing back to the bank to get the Hood’s answer.

“You’re lucky you caught that second arrow,” he says, “or your shoulder would have been screwed.”

“Do you even consider the effects of your actions? You would have ruined my shoulder to do what? Prove a point? What is _wrong_ with you?” he snaps before rushing around the bank, fixing the things that were out of place.

“You would have learned,” the Hood says.

“Learned what? That you’re considerably more morally corrupt than I initially thought?” he asks, “because I got that lesson loud and clear even without the arrow to the shoulder, thank you,” he says sarcastically.

“You didn’t even bother to examine the building you were working with, you ran in front of glass doors, perfectly visible to the guy with the gun, almost got shot, then nearly got shot again by me because you decided scum was worth saving,” the Hood says, “you’re ability to take care of yourself is embarrassing.”

“Oh so you’re giving me superhero lessons now?” he asks, blurring his face when the Hood steps closer to him, close enough to recognize him though logically Barry knew there was no way they could know each other. “I can take care of myself, thanks,” he says, jamming as much annoyance and condescension into his voice as he could.

The Hood still manages to outdo him without even trying, “no. You rely on your speed to save you, that doesn’t mean you can take care of yourself, that means you can run fast. If you want to do this then I suggest getting real skills,” he snarls.

“I don’t want your advice,” Barry snaps, “because the only way you’d take me seriously is if I was exactly like you and I’d _die_ before I killed people without at least asking questions first.” With that he runs off, headed back to S.T.A.R Labs.

*

If Oliver got the opportunity to strangle the streak he was taking it hands down. The kid was a total moron with no idea what he was doing and he hadn’t even listened to Oliver’s advice. The only saving grace to his day was that he was so exhausted from going to bed so late and getting up so early that when he got home from Central he passed out pretty much immediately.

Barry had the usual shiny quality that he did in Oliver’s dreams and he couldn’t help but be disappointed that this wasn’t real. “You are so stubborn,” Oliver tells him and Barry laughs.

“You already knew that,” Barry says, wandering closer and Oliver has the urge to back away but he ignores it. His sensitivity to touch had never affected him here and it was a relief to have that comfort here when he didn’t get much touch awake outside of handshakes, which he had grown used to again. That and running, literally, into Barry but Barry jerked away so fast that he didn’t really register Barry was there until he was gone again. The only exception was when Oliver had reached out to steady him without thinking about it and once he realized that he was touching someone he dropped Barry and stepped back. That was the proper reaction, though, if for different reasons than not being particularly fond of touch.

“Sure I did but I had no idea that awake you was so much more stubborn than sleep you,” he says. Barry in his dreams was far more willing to be in his company, to listen, he was far less leery.

“Well when we met here it was under considerably different circumstances, that does have an influence on how I view you here, you know,” Barry says and takes another step closer. This time Oliver can’t help the instinct to step back and Barry looks confused but he stays where he is instead of moving closer.

He supposed that made sense, when they met in his dreams he had been running from… someone, he couldn’t remember who, but the landscape around him had changed suddenly and he had found himself clinging to the edge of a cliff. Barry had appeared suddenly and at first Oliver had thought it was Shado, Barry was slight enough to be mistaken for her at the angle Oliver had been at, but when he said Shado’s name it was Barry who looked over the edge. He had dreams like that for months afterwards, always running from someone or something that was after him and in every dream Barry somehow managed to save his ass. “Yeah I guess strangling someone upon meeting them isn’t exactly the best way to make a good impression,” he says.

“You probably could have come back from that if it wasn’t for your creepy behavior afterwards,” Barry says, “but you do have a special talent for making things much harder on yourself than necessary so,” he says and something about the way he spoke seemed familiar but Oliver brushes it off because obviously it was familiar, it wasn’t like this was the first dream he’s had with Barry in it.

He sighs, “yeah,” he says, “do I actually have a chance of coming back from that because awake you still sort of hates me,” he thinks anyways. It was hard to read Barry because he was simultaneously attentive and disinterested in Oliver and he wasn’t sure which, at this point, he was supposed to pay more attention to. For now he assumed he was to pay attention more to the disinterest because of how things started with them, then he supposed he could pay attention to the other stuff when Barry was more comfortable with him.

“I don’t hate you; I just don’t know how to feel about you. I can tell that you’re trying but I can’t tell if that’ll amount to anything and I loathe the idea of soul mates so I’m not willing to give you a shot only based off that when everyone else expects me to. Just keep trying and I’ll be willing to try back, I’m generally as forgiving as I am stubborn so,” he says and grins at Oliver. Again he’s struck that that speech pattern is familiar but he doesn’t know why that should matter to him because it should be familiar. Why was he registering something as familiar when he already knew why it was familiar? What was new in his life that would make an already familiar speech pattern seem recognizable elsewhere? He wasn’t sure.

“Let’s hope so, I’m terrible at this soul mate thing,” he says. He was also pretty terrible at the relationship thing in general, the only decent relationship he had was with Tommy and even then they had problems. Well, maybe Felicity and Dig but they had their own set of issues too, like Dig’s expectations that Oliver would put his mother on his list and the weird sexual tension he had with Felicity despite disinterest on behalf of both of them.

“You’re so observant and smart Oliver, just use that knowledge of people and motivations for yourself,” Barry says, like it was that easy to do.

“I don’t know how to do that in a healthy way,” he says because that wasn’t what he’d been taught how to do. He’d been taught to manipulate people, to use them, and he already had half of that mastered. He had sort of… forgotten how to do things normally, or as normally as he managed to muster before being shipwrecked. That obviously wasn’t the dynamic Barry, well, anyone, would want but he wasn’t entirely sure how to gather information and use it in a healthy manner, which should probably be obvious.

“Has it occurred to you to ask? Even if you didn’t do that a pretty good indicator that you’re manipulating someone is having an ulterior motive for your actions that the other person doesn’t know about,” Barry says.

“But like isn’t purposefully doing things for you that I know you like and acting a certain way around you technically manipulation?” he asks.

Barry smacks his palm to his forehead, “no Oliver, that’s just being nice and getting to know someone. Besides, people act differently in situations all the time, like the way you act with your friends is different from how you act around your parents and how you act at work is different from both of those situations. You aren’t lying to anyone or manipulating them or whatever, just different situations call for different behavior. Let me be a little clearer here, the ulterior motive would cause harm to the other person whether or not they find out, and mental harm is still harm, just to be clear,” he says.

So basically him not letting anyone in on the fact that he was the Hood, which he tried to keep out of his everyday life because if people found out he was to Hood the obvious targets would be his family and friends. A.R.G.U.S had already threatened Tommy and Thea; he wasn’t going to stick anyone else in danger because of his own actions. “Oh,” is all he says. Relationships had never been his thing and evidently they were never going to become his thing. That was hardly surprising but it still sucked when he wasn’t sure how, or even if, he could pull himself out of the rut he somehow fell into. Or even if he _wanted_ to pull himself out. Sometimes it was just easier if he was alone; no one got hurt that way, least of all him.  

“But you asked questions, that’s good!” Barry says, giving him more credit than he should get.

“And I looked an idiot,” he points out.

“Would you rather look like an idiot or an abuser?” Barry asks, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re much more like your awake self here now, but obviously I wouldn’t want to be an abuser. No one should want that,” he says.

“Probably because we actually know each other now outside of dreams so now we can’t romanticize one another. And great, then continue asking questions, I’m sure I’ll ask you something dumb at some point, we all do it, it’s okay,” he says. Says someone who didn’t get tortured when he got the answer wrong, but he doesn’t say that. There was no need to put his shit on Barry.

“ _Oliver_!” someone yells and he wakes with a start to find Thea looming over him. He restrains the urge to yell at her because it probably wasn’t her fault she had to wake him up, their mother probably sent her to suffer with him in the morning.

“What?” he says, trying to go for neutral but it came out annoyed and condescending.

“Can I borrow a few of your video games?” she asks.

“I’m going to kill you,” he says.

“Great! I’ll take that as a yes,” Thea says, grinning, before she bounces out of his room, video games already in hand. That asshole woke him up just to annoy him. He looks at the clock and at least thanks whatever deity that might be out there that he had finally gotten his damn sleep patterns back. Then he shoves a pillow back over his head and goes back to sleep.

*

Barry wakes up and looks at the clock, relieved to find that it was seven thirty and he had finally gotten his sleep patterns back. Living with Oliver’s sleep patterns was horrible and the one day he had to work he had bitten everyone’s heads off and almost gotten fired because that included his demon boss. He bought everyone coffee to make it up to them and decided that Oliver Queen in the morning was not someone he wanted to spend any time with. Maybe in the afternoon, well, maybe at night because Oliver woke up in the afternoon.

He had another date with Iris, at the same coffee shop that she had suggested they meet at the last time he came to visit; only now he was aware that Queen Consolidated was like two inches away. “So you got your sleep patterns back,” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“Thank god or I would be a terrible person,” he says.

“I’m sure it’s not _that_ bad,” Iris says and of course she would say that.

“Iris when I woke up yesterday I walked into my living room and saw this house plant and for twenty minutes I stared at this plant thinking about how pissed off I was that this plant was sucking up my time, energy, and resources. I water it like twice a week, it’s almost dead, but I was mad that it existed in my general presence. I was mad, Iris, at a _house plant_ ,” he says, emphasizing for affect.

She winces, “like… genuinely angry at the plant?” she asks.

“Yeah Iris, I was tempted to throw it out the window, Oliver in the morning sucks. Well, afternoon because that’s when he gets up. He’s like useless until dinner, I have no idea how he gets anything done ever,” he says.

“He’s rich, he has no stuff to get done and he’s pretty well known for partying. And Lance, one of the detectives on the Hood case, is like _hard core_ convinced that he’s the Hood. Oliver Queen. Could you imagine? He can’t handle waking up, how could he execute such a well-thought, cunning, meticulous, and frankly quite impressive plan. It’s not possible,” she decides and Barry frowns.

“What does any of that have to do with getting up late?” he asks, not seeing the connection between the two.

Iris snorts, “oh come on, are you saying that it’s possible that Oliver is the Hood?” she asks, obviously skeptical.

Barry doesn’t even know why he’s offended, he sure as hell hoped Oliver wasn’t the Hood, the Hood killed people, but he was still annoyed. “I’m not saying Oliver is the Hood, that doesn’t even make sense, obviously Lance is after Oliver because of a personal vendetta-”

“That’s what I said!” Iris says, seemingly glad that Barry agreed.

“But sleeping late doesn’t mean Oliver is too stupid to pull off the Hood’s plans, he’s got the tech knowledge given that his parents’ company works with electronics and stuff, he probably knows half the victims personally, and he probably knows about all the dirty dealing they do. So you have know-how, motive, and a way for him to get around within that particular social circle undetected in order to follow through on the Hood’s plans, he could do it,” he says like it was obvious. Iris, judging from the look on her face, does not think the same.

“And all the archery and stuff? He’s been stuck on an island for five years, how would he know how to do any of that?” she asks, entertaining his ideas for some reason.

“Maybe he made a bow on the island, maybe he wasn’t even on the island, maybe he worked for some sketchy government organization, you don’t know, he hasn’t told anyone what happened and even you know that his story didn’t match up when he came back. So like he could have learned,” he says.

Iris looks confused, “I know you’re fond of conspiracy theories but really Barry? That’s just… too far-fetched to be real,” she says.

“Well everyone thought that lightning going around my mother while she was getting killed wasn’t true and it was too far-fetched but the lightning people see behind that streak guy is literally exactly what I described so,” he says, “clearly my theory has merit.”

Iris frowns, “are you saying the streak killed your mother?” she asks.

“Oh my god, what the hell, no!” he says, upset that Iris had unknowingly implied he killed his own mom.

“I… I’m confused now so I’m going to order us new drinks and hopefully you’ll be less defensive when I come back,” she says, walking off confused. She wasn’t the only one.

 He didn’t notice when Oliver came in, probably because he was sitting with his back to the door, until Oliver says hello to him. “Oh, hey, I was just talking about you!” Barry says, blurting out the first thing that his stupid mouth came up with. God damnit, brain, why couldn’t that stupid slab of meat do anything good for him?

“Good things, I hope,” Oliver says, probably out of habit, before he seems to rethink his response, “actually there isn’t much good to tell. So… I guess I take that back,” he says awkwardly. By now Iris has spotted them across the coffee shop and Barry knew she was about to do everything in her power to not disturb them for as long as they managed to keep up an awkward conversation.

“Well you’re trying so at least give yourself some credit. But you’re kind of right, for some reason I was defending you against Iris’ opinion that you couldn’t be the Hood because you sleep late? I don’t know, it didn’t really make a lot of sense and it involved you working for a sketchy government organization instead of being abandoned on that island. Crazy, right?” he says and Oliver looks deeply uncomfortable, “oh, shit, does talking about the island make you uncomfortable? Damn, I didn’t even think, I am _so_ sorry,” Barry says. Damnit, he should have thought of that. Obviously.

“It’s, uh, its fine. It’s not really that big of a deal, Barry,” Oliver says and really, he’s just being too nice.

“Of course it is, I’m so sorry, that was really dumb of me,” he says, feeling guilty for probably aggravating Oliver’s PTSD by accident.

“It’s fine Barry, really. What’s kind of weird here is that Iris is practically staring a hole through my back right now and I have no clue why,” he says and Barry frowns because Oliver hadn’t looked away from Barry since he got in here and Iris was across the room behind him. How the hell would he know that Iris was staring? Maybe he could like… feel it or something.

“She’s excited that we’re speaking, I think,” he says and looks pointedly at Iris, who looks away for a grand total of point two seconds.

“Oh, well, me too. Iris drag you here again?” he asks.

“No need to drag me, I’m like… addicted to the coffee here. Also I got my sleeping patterns back so yay!” he says, wiggling excitedly in his seat.

Oliver smiles, for real, and Barry is struck by how pretty he looked when he really shouldn’t have been. Of course Oliver was pretty, literally everyone with functioning eyes knew that, himself included, so he ignores his stupid brain doing stupid things. “Yeah me too, thank god. I have no clue how you can live like that, who even gets up that early?” he asks, looking lost and confused.

“Who gets up that late? How do you even get anything done? And _god_ you are an asshole when you wake up, yesterday I almost murdered an innocent house plant for existing,” he says and Oliver laughs. It was a pleasant, if disused, sound and Barry wondered how often Oliver genuinely found things funny enough to laugh at. He seemed dark; at least who he was now, pre-island Oliver seemed lighter but in all the wrong ways.

“I’ve always been a night owl in an early bird world, I never did understand how the hell people could get up at the asscrack of dawn, but that’s probably because that’s generally when I went to bed. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that I prefer the night,” he says, “and truthfully with no one around to irritate me at night I get more stuff done, contrary to popular belief.”

“I could never do that, my biological clock is set, there’s no getting around it but I can see what you mean, about getting things done faster when no one is around. And no, it really doesn’t surprise me that you prefer the night, you’re very Batman that way,” he says and Oliver gives him such an unimpressed look at that that he starts laughing.

“I am _not_ like Batman. First off I, a grown man, do not cosplay as a giant bat to fight crime and expect people to take me seriously. If I had had to emulate an animal I’d choose a cat, they’re nocturnal, their good hunters, they’re very agile, and they’re ruthless. Not a bat,” he says, sounding indignant and Barry starts laughing harder.

“I’d be a parrot because they can talk and I think that’s cool, also they’re difficult to catch, like me,” Barry says, grinning.

Oliver smiles, “yeah that’s true, not the cool parrot thing, parrots are dumb, the difficult to catch part,” he says.

Barry gasps, “you think parrots are dumb? I trusted you!” he jokes, pressing his hand to his heart.

Oliver frowns, “no you didn’t,” he says, successfully ruining the mood and making things awkward.

“Pro tip, next time just roll with it because now it’s awkward and weird,” he says, scrunching his nose.

“Yikes, yeah. Sorry. Well now that I have successfully ruined the only successful conversation we’ve had I’m going to go get coffee and Iris can come back and stop doing that weird wiggling thing. So uh, have a good day,” Oliver says and flees before Barry can tell him that the interaction wasn’t _ruined_ per se. He thought it went well, and Oliver hadn’t done anything weird or creepy, plus they both laughed, awkward end aside he thought it went well.

Maybe the next time he saw Oliver he’d tell him that. Iris pretty much runs over, practically throwing Barry’s drink at him before all but jumping across the table, “oh my god tell me everything, you _laughed_!” she pretty much yells. He looks over to Oliver and they share a look, bonding over how weird they thought Iris’ enthusiasm was. Well look at that, they bonded and no one got strangled.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright y'all, Oliver's time to shine is... actually the next several chapters after this one but Barry is a but less of a stubborn shit in this chapter so there's that! Lol. Also no offense to anyone who lives in North Dakota, it was literally the first place I thought of, also no offense to anyone who has plaid pants or has had an emo phase. Truth be told I'd wear plaid pants now just to make 15 year old emo me happy. Nostalgia is a weird thing lol.

He probably should have expected the press to show up at some point, he was _Oliver Queen’s_ soul mate and the media just _loved_ the guy. When the lights go off in his face though, he isn’t expecting it, nor does he expect the five hundred questions but only one catches his attention. He isn’t entirely _what_ gave that particular idiot the idea that he was using Oliver for his money but he starts laughing, probably a little harder than the situation warranted. “Oh my god you people can’t be serious, obviously I’m not using Oliver for his money,” he says as if that was the most obvious thing in the world, “and even if I was he doesn’t have enough money to buy my love.” With that, and a final laugh at the reporters, he makes his way into his workplace only to find his demon boss glaring him down and demanding explanations.

*

Oliver doesn’t make a habit of watching the news but for some reason he and his mother decide that whatever the Starling newscasters were saying tonight was of interest. He doesn’t expect to find Barry on the screen laughing at something someone had said to him as if it was the funniest thing in the world. “…Obviously I’m not using Oliver for his money and even if I was he doesn’t have enough money to buy my love,” he says as is it was stupid to suggest anything that ran contrary to his words.

“Should… should I be offended?” he asks because he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Obviously it was great that Barry had no interest in his money, not that he hadn’t already gathered that, but the last bit threw him off.

“Would you prefer to be able to buy Barry’s love?” Roy asks from the doorway, obviously having lingered long enough to accurately judge the situation.

“Well it would be easier, but no,” he says.

“Then I guess you shouldn’t be offended,” Roy says as Thea walks into the room looking confused.

“What shouldn’t Oliver be offended about?” she asks.

“He seems to think he should be offended that Barry told a bunch of reporters that Oliver didn’t have enough money to buy his love,” Roy tells her.

Thea looks confused, “why would you be offended by that, Oliver?” she asks, looking at him like he was stupid.

“It wasn’t what he said; it was how he said it. Like someone else could buy his love but I can’t, does he know how much money we have?” he asks. This time everyone, his mom included, looks at him like he’s an idiot.

“He probably meant that you can’t buy his love because your desired method of communication upon meeting turned out to be strangling him,” Roy says.

“Roy!” Thea says in a scolding tone.

Roy shrugs, “just saying,” he says, raising his hands in the air in surrender.

“It was one time,” Oliver mumbles, “when is everyone going to let that go?”

“Really Oliver?” Moira asks, rolling her eyes at him. “Well I suppose now is as good a time as ever to give him a lesson in how to handle the media,” she says, pulling herself off the couch.

“Yeah, about that, he isn’t going to talk to you,” Oliver says, “I told him that you manipulated him the first time you met so he probably isn’t fond of you now.”

She sighs and rubs her temples slowly, “and why would you go and do a stupid thing like that, Oliver?” she asks.

“Uh, because you did?” he says, voice edging up a bit at the end as if that was a question even though it wasn’t. That answer obviously wasn’t good enough, “I can’t help that it’s true,” he says.

“Why you _insist_ on making my life harder I have no idea. No matter, I’ve long ago figured out how to clean up your messes and this is no different. Someone needs to teach the poor thing how to deal with the media before this gets out of hand,” she says. Oliver had a considerably more direct way but he lets his mother think she had things under control while he goes to frighten some reporters away from Barry.

*

He doesn’t expect to run into Moira Queen but he supposed it was only a matter of time before he ran into her again, he didn’t really expect it to be on his way to grab coffee after work though. “Barry,” she says upon seeing him, “I trust you’re doing well?” she asks.

Contrary to popular belief he wasn’t a total moron, he knew Moira must have some motive for being here. “I’m fine, aside from the terrible station coffee that threatens to kill us all, you?” he asks, wondering if she’ll get to the point quickly.

“Just fine, thank you. Though I did notice your, ahem, brief television appearance earlier,” she says and great, straight to the point then.

“Yeah, apparently being attached to Oliver makes me newsworthy. Guess we should be happy they didn’t catch wind of that right away, hmm? That would have been a disaster,” he says.

Moira sighs, “you’re telling me, and Oliver does not need help in that department, he does well enough on his own. Which brings me to the point of my visit; it would probably be best if someone taught you how to deal with the media, just so you aren’t so thrown the next time you get ambushed,” she says.

Barry nods, “and I suppose that would be a lesson from you, then?” he asks, “I appreciate it but I deal with the media semi frequently for my job so I know what I’m doing,” he says. That was only partially true but it wasn’t like Moira would know that. Mostly he didn’t really want to end up being manipulated by someone Oliver seemed to think was a master at it.

“Barry, dealing with the media as a professional versus a person are two totally different things, trust me, I’ve done both,” she says, smiling pleasantly enough.

“I… well, I thought I did okay,” he says because he did just fine considering he had been caught completely off guard. “It isn’t like I said anything bad,” he points out. Well, maybe a little, but it isn’t like Oliver should be offended that he couldn’t buy Barry’s love because that was a good thing.

“It wasn’t _what_ you said Barry, it was how you said it. The way you spoke suggested that Oliver couldn’t buy your love, but someone _else_ could and I assure you there are plenty of people with large bank accounts that would take advantage of that,” she says. They did, he was sure, but he had no desire to sell the Queen’s secrets when he didn’t even know what half of them were. Most of the things Oliver told him could be extracted from the news coverage that followed the family around on a regular basis.

“Even if did know anything about you guys I don’t really have a burning need to sell the information or whatever. I mean why would I even do that?” he asks logically.

“Reporters are smarter than that, dear, I’m sure that friend of yours, Iris, can tell you that. I’m sure you’ve already run into at least _one_ person who’s asked you a few questions, things that seemed harmless at the time-”

“Oh _shit_ ,” Barry mutters, thinking about the guy he had run into after the police managed to get rid of the media circus. Nothing had seemed particularly _off_ about the guy, and he had seemed just as annoyed with the media as everyone else…

It occurs to Barry that perhaps he was far too easily manipulated and he should probably work on that. Moira sighs, “don’t worry, I’ll deal with it, whatever it is you’ve said can’t possibly worse than the messes Oliver has made. If it would make you feel more comfortable, though, I could always ask Laurel to give you a few tips. She was in a similar position when she and Oliver dated, she’d be able to help you out,” she says.

“Laurel… _Lance_? As in Oliver’s ex whose sister he slept with? Why the hell would she do anything for him?” he asks. He had heard that she had shown up in Oliver’s defense when her father implicated him in the Hood case but he assumed that was to piss her father off, not to help Oliver.

Moira shrugs, “she and Oliver seemed to have worked through their… differences,” she says.

“That’s… a very nice spin on that situation but alright. I guess if Laurel’s willing,” he says, not entirely sure how he’d been roped into this to begin with.

*

When Barry woke up he had the _greatest_ idea ever and he needed to tell Oliver immediately because he had _plans_. Thankfully Iris had already pointed Queen Consolidated out to him so all he had to do was show up to harass Oliver at work. He did, however, forget that Oliver was basically useless until dinner so he shows up a bit early, but Felicity was there so at least he wasn’t sitting awkwardly in Oliver’s office. “He has really weird sleeping patterns,” Barry tells her, wrinkling his nose.

“Right? He’s like a raccoon because he’s nocturnal and stuff, or he doesn’t even bother sleeping,” she says. Well thank god he didn’t get _that_ aspect of Oliver’s sleeping patterns, when he didn’t get enough sleep he got frustrated ten times faster. In college that resulted in a lot of him glaring the toaster into submission, it never worked but he tried damn hard.

“He thinks he’s more like a cat,” Barry says.

“Well he’s petty like one,” she says, “honestly you have no idea.”

Oliver decides to show up then, looking generally displeased with his presence in Queen Consolidated at least until he spies Barry and does a double take, rubbing his eyes and blinking rapidly. “I’m not a hallucination, Oliver,” he says.

“Sorry. When I woke up I _swore_ Thea was you and I freaked her out when I said she was cute,” he says.

Felicity looks like she feels bad for Oliver and Barry can relate, before the nightmares and the sedatives he used to talk in his sleep and Iris heard all kinds of weird things. Like the time he yelled at her to get the flying pterodactyl sweaters out, of where she never found out, just that Barry wanted them gone immediately. “Creepy, but the understandable kind, one time I told Iris she looked like a hotdog in my sleep so I can’t judge. Anyways I have ideas!” he says excitedly.

Thankfully Oliver looked excited too, “yeah? Come to my office,” he says and Barry follows him in, Felicity ‘sneaking’ pictures the whole way. He wasn’t _blind_ ; he could see her taking what she probably assumed were cute pictures of the two of them that were probably actually really weird looking.

“So,” Barry says, perching himself on Oliver’s desk, “we should catfish the media.”

Oliver’s smiles fades to confusion, “…catfish… the media?” he asks, “for what purpose?”

Barry snorts, “you lack imagination, for fun obviously. We could tell them _anything_ and they would believe whatever we said. Like we could tell them we’re going to get five hundred cats and move to North Dakota and they would treat that as if we were serious. Seriously, the possibilities are endless and if there is anything I’ve learned from reading news articles it’s that people are going to believe whatever they want whether or not it’s true. So I mean if we’re going to get harassed by annoying reporters I figured we should at least have a good time,” he says reasonably.

“Who would want five hundred cats?” Oliver asks, squinting at him. Of all the material Oliver could have focused on of course he’d choose _that_.

“Look, I’m just saying that no rational adult could possibly believe that anyone would want to move to North Dakota. If the media is going to be up our asses we might as well give them shit to work with,” he says, not realizing the pun he makes until he hears Felicity let out a sharp laugh on the other side of the glass. She struggles briefly with a piece of tech that he assumed was some sort of two way speaker thing before managing to wrangle the thing under control.

“Sorry,” she says, speaking into the speaker thing, her voice coming through on another speaker on Oliver’s desk. Huh. He thought those things only worked one way but he admittedly watched far too many movies.

Oliver rolls his eyes, “yes Barry, the part where we move to North Dakota is obviously the unrealistic part of that statement,” he says with far more sarcasm than strictly needed, thank you. “We are not… catfishing the media, what do catfish even have to do with this concept?” he asks, frowning.

“How do you not know what catfishing is? Everyone knows what catfishing is,” he says.

“I was abandoned on an island for five years, forgive me,” Oliver says sarcastically.

“Okay well first of all you can stop, drop, and roll that attitude right out the door and second catfishing is usually a term applied to making up a fake identity and starting a relationship with someone using that identity. In this case we’d just be lying about everything else instead of who we are,” he says.

Outside the room Felicity bursts out laughing and Oliver sighs, “I can’t believe you just said that with a straight face,” he says, shaking his head before he starts laughing too, sharing a look with Felicity. They were bonding but over what Barry had no god damn clue because he hadn’t said anything particularly amusing.

“We aren’t going to catfish the media Barry; people _do_ actually believe what they read you know, even if it sounds insane. Trust me, Tommy and I once moved to Iceland to become Amish, it didn’t stick though, the clothes were itchy,” he says and Barry snorts.

“Is that like… a real thing? Because I would _love_ to read that story,” he says. He had only heard about the really insane stuff having lived a few cities over but that sounded like _gold_.

“Yeah, Tommy and I decided to just make stuff up and for a month people took us seriously. I think it might have been the Amish thing that threw them off, I mean could you imagine me Amish? I could probably commit now but younger me? Not so much, the only thing I showed any sort of lasting commitment to was partying,” Oliver says. Yeah, Barry knew, he heard all about it even now, Oliver’s one disastrous night out aside.

He sighs, “well it’s no fun bonding over catfishing the media when you and Tommy have already done that,” Barry mumbles grumpily. It was such a good idea, he and Oliver could come up with absurd and convoluted stories together to screw with people, that was always fun when they were obviously fake. When people started spreading rumors about Iris in high school that’s what she did and honestly the results were hilarious.

“Or we could pick a regular bonding activity, like lunch,” Oliver says, raising an eyebrow.

“But that’s boring! I figured we could like… spice thing up,” he says, “keep things exciting.” Granted his life was pretty exciting as it was, with the whole super hero thing and all, but hopefully Oliver wouldn’t have to deal with that.

“Things started pretty spicy, Barry, I don’t think we need to spice things up. We should like… spice things down, or like sideways or something,” Oliver says and Barry starts laughing because spice things _sideways_? How was that even a thing?

“Fine, we can bond over food but catfishing the media was a _great_ idea, don’t look at me like that, it definitely wasn’t the worst idea I’ve ever had. I had an emo phase, let me tell you the plaid pants and five different brightly colored studded were a _way_ worse idea than purposefully misleading people with a dumb story,” he says. Seriously, _plaid pants_. And they were skinny jeans no less, as if they couldn’t get worse. Like he loved a good skinny jean but in _plaid_? There was no circumstance in which plaid pants were necessary.

Oliver wrinkles his nose, “you had an emo phase? Ew,” he says, shaking his head at Barry.

“Don’t judge me, you had that nasty ass haircut that made you look like a badly groomed Pomeranian for years,” he says.

“I did not look like a badly groomed dog! It was hockey hair, it was in style,” he says, justifying his crappy looking long hair terribly.

“Well my black hair, skinny jeans, studded belts, and, dare I say it, ‘rawr means ‘I love you’ in dinosaur’ shirts were in fashion too. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a bad style choice,” he says, “but Tommy’s bad seventies porn star phase? That takes the cake.” Out of boredom he had  gone through some social media stuff and found some pretty crappy pictures of Oliver with long hair, but Tommy’s porn ‘stache was far worse than Oliver’s crap haircut and Barry’s over exposed angst covered photos combined.

Oliver sighs and rubs his eyes, “the porn ‘stache. He _loved_ that thing and I couldn’t tell you why because it doesn’t look good on anyone but on him it looked especially bad,” Oliver says, “I will give you actual money to see the evidence of your emo phase though. I have _got_ to see what you look like with black hair and plaid skinny jeans.”

“There is no way that you will be exposed to those pictures as long as I li-”

“I have pictures and oh my _god_ he’s adorable!” Felicity says, her voice interrupting him over the speaker thing on Oliver’s desk. “He’s a _baby_ ,” she says, grinning at them through the glass.

“I know about your college years,” he threatens and Felicity sighs.

“Fine, but only because there are things that should never be exposed to the light of day,” she tells him.

Oliver looks back of forth between the two, “what about her college years?” he asks, obviously invested in the answer.

“Nothing,” they reply in sync and Felicity distracts Oliver with lunch plans with Barry. He goes willingly, mercifully, because Felicity’s goth phase actually looked cute on her but Barry’s emo phase? Not so much. He actually somewhat cared what Oliver thought of him now and if they could avoid embarrassing high school photos that would be a big plus for him.                                           

*

“So,” Oliver says, “what gave you the bright idea to catfish the media?” he asks.

Barry was tempted to ask what gave Oliver the bright idea to take him to a restaurant he couldn’t even afford to look at let alone eat in but he decides to keep his mouth shut. “I uh, probably have a lot of misconceptions about fame?” he says, his voice going up a bit at the end as if that was a question. It wasn’t a question; it was almost certainly a fact.

“You and everyone else who has never been famous,” he says, “this would have been a great idea five years ago when my reputation still sucked. Now mom is on my ass about behaving like an adult because she seems to think I should take over Queen Consolidated,” he says.

“Do you want to run Queen Consolidated?” Barry asks and Oliver looks surprised.

“I… think that’s the first time anyone has ever asked me that, to be honest,” he says and now it was Berry’s turn to be surprised.

“People just… expected you to want to run the company? Since when? It’s not like that is a small undertaking,” he says. It seemed ridiculous to him to expect someone to do something without at least asking them first but then Joe had been a particularly supportive parent. Most parents, Barry had learned, were not as in tune with their kids as Joe always seemed to be with him and Iris. He had his moments, all parents did, but he at least asked about their aspirations instead of creating his own plan for them. Aside from being mad at Iris for wanting to be a police officer because she’d be putting herself in danger, and Iris was still annoyed with that, he didn’t interfere with their own plans for themselves.

“Since always I guess, I’m the oldest so,” Oliver shrugs, “I guess that means I get stuck with the family business.”

“Gee, you sound thrilled about that,” he says sarcastically.

“I’m not, really, I feel more obligated more than anything, like I owe it to my father to run it seems how he basically died for me,” Oliver says and wow, that got heavy fast.

“The only thing you owe your father is to live the happy and fulfilling life I’m sure he wanted you to live,” Barry says, surprised at the protective edge his voice takes when he says that. Judging from the look on Oliver’s face he was surprised too.

“To be honest I didn’t think you’d care,” he says. That was fair, Barry supposed, but he still resented the comment.

“Of course I care, you’re a human being who should make your own autonomous choices, not follow whatever plan it is your parents might have made for you. How’s that fair?” he asks.

“Spoken like someone who hasn’t felt the crushing need to do right by his family,” Oliver says.

“You don’t know me, and trust me; I know the crushing need to do right by my family. But that doesn’t mean I should do so by sacrificing my own aspirations. You can do right by your family and do the things you want, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Barry says.

Oliver looks away, “not in this case,” he says and Barry was tempted to tell him he was being a stubborn idiot but he decides against it.

“Why not?” he asks, curious as to why Oliver felt like his parents’ life plan was inescapable.

“It just is,” he says and that was the god damn most stupid answer Barry had ever heard.

“You know when you were a kid and no matter how good your argument might have been when your parents said ‘because I said so’ the argument was over despite the fact that that’s a dumb response? That’s literally the argument you’re making right now and I feel compelled to tell you that’s dumb. Whatever your real reasons are I’m sure they’re good reasons, but if you decide that the best course of action is to live exactly how your parents told you to without finding some way to find enjoyment for yourself you’re only going to resent them later. That’s literally the last way you’d want to honor someone’s memory. Now while we’re on super uncomfortable topics that aren’t at all fit for lunch please warn me the next time you decide for whatever stupid reason to take me to a restaurant that’s so nice I look like a homeless raccoon. I mean I appreciate the sentiment but I look like a two cent hooker and I’m about eighty percent sure that napkin costs more than everything I own,” he says, eyeing said napkin suspiciously.

He’s not sure what to expect from that but of all the material he could have covered Oliver chooses to focus on the raccoon statement. “I think raccoons count as homeless already because they don’t, at least technically, have homes. Also give yourself some credit, you’d cost more than two cents, they don’t even make pennies now, how would you get paid?” he asks, looking confused.

For a second Barry doesn’t know how to respond but Oliver’s peril over his theoretical two cent payment was just too funny not to laugh at.


	9. Chapter 9

Barry, in all honesty, forgot about his media lesson via Laurel until Laurel show up on his door step. “Hey, you’re much less pointy looking in person,” she says as if that was a totally normal way to greet someone.

“I… what? I’m not pointy,” he says.

“Actually at certain angles your head looks like a light bulb, Oliver doesn’t agree but Oliver thinks tofu is an acceptable food to eat so he isn’t to be trusted. So, the media, strap in because honestly this is going to be a long day,” she tells him and sits herself on his couch, clearly having no issues with making herself at home.

Laurel had about a million and one tips but thankfully she anticipated it not being possible for Barry to remember everything she said so she brought notes. It didn’t take long for him to gather than Laurel was frighteningly organized and well put together, which made him wonder how the hell she and Oliver ever had a relationship. “So basically don’t do… anything that is even remotely suspicious, which is everything,” he says, seeing if he had gotten that right.

She nods, “basically. I’m sure they’ll get bored of you eventually, they got bored of me when they realized I wasn’t really that interesting, but until then the reporters will be generally unpleasant.”

“Great, I’m never going to get boring,” he mumbles, thinking of all the strange things that had happened in his past. First his mother, then all that intelligence he displayed just become a forensic scientist, as if that was a low-grade occupation, then Oliver, being struck by lightning. His past was ripe for the picking and so unlike Laurel’s generic middle-class police officer upbringing.

“Oh I’m sure you’re not as exciting as you think you are,” Laurel says bluntly, smiling in a way she might have thought was apologetic when it was not.

“My father was convicted of first degree murder when I was fifteen after a five year trial and the victim was my mother. I’ve spent the entire time since then trying to find out who actually killed her because it wasn’t him, and believe me if you read my statement it reads like science fiction, oh, that’s because I witnessed the whole thing. I forgot to mention that. And that doesn’t even cover anything regarding Oliver, or being stuck by lightning, or anything else interesting that’s happened to me since then,” he says. Like becoming a lowkey superhero.

Laurel takes a breath, “I underestimated the drama in your life, you’re right, you’ll never stop being interesting. Good luck,” she chirps and goes to get up.

“Wait, no tips?” he asks somewhat desperately.

“I’ve never been struck by lightning, sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.

“Got any tips on Oliver?” he asks, figuring maybe he should like… make an effort or something. Oliver was trying so he probably should as well.

Laurel sighs and sits back down, “oh that is way more complicated than the media. To be honest most of my advice is probably outdated, he’s changed a lot since we dated,” she says.

“Has he?” Barry asks, curious mostly. Oliver was different than he was before, he knew, but how different? Enough to make a difference?

“Are you blind?” Laurel asks, “he’s a totally different person. When we dated he was, well, we both were immature asses. He had a lot of growing up to do and I don’t know what happened on that island but he did not come back the same person. He’s… darker now, somehow, and a lot more controlled even when it looks like he’s giving up control. And he’s suspicious of like… everything that isn’t you, he’s sure about you in a way I probably wouldn’t consider possible for someone as suspicious as he is,” she says.

Doesn’t that make him feel like an ass when the last thing in his life he had any certainty in was Oliver. “I’m not blind, I can see that he’s different, that he’s changed, but I don’t know what that means for me and neither does he. And he seems dead set on making this work and I have no idea why because we don’t really have much chemistry,” he says.

Laurel snorts and shakes her head, “now you’re just lying to yourself. You two have a lot of chemistry actually, more than I thought you would from what Oliver has told me about you. The way the two of you tell it you’re all but disinterested but I saw the two of you together the other day, eating, and it was pretty clear the two of you had a connection. And before you tell me it was one sided it wasn’t, I took the picture to prove my point to Oliver but you need convincing too, apparently, so,” she says and pulls her phone out of her purse, tapping the screen.

She hands him the device and he takes it, looking at the picture she had probably taken across the street of the two of them. Oliver had his head ducked, smiling into his food and Barry was talking animatedly about something with his fork in the air, probably making hand gestures fork be damned. Laurel was right, it was clear even from a two dimensional picture that was kind of grainy because she had zoomed in on them that they had some sort of connection. “Oh,” he says, not sure what else he was supposed to say.

“Yeah,” Laurel says, “I mean the two of you have a lot to work out but it’s pretty clear something is there whether or not either of you are willing to admit it.”

“I’m pretty sure Oliver is willing to admit we have a connection, he’s spent the last month and a half trying to convince me we do,” Barry says logically. Hell, Oliver tried so hard he bordered on abuse for the first couple of times they met.

Laurel laughs, “oh honey, you don’t even know. See the thing about Oliver is that he’s terrified of abandonment, so terrified that he actually actively creates situations so his worst fears play out, giving him an excuse to think his fears are valid. Before you were safe, temporary, he knew at some point you could walk away and he desperately tried to cling to you to keep you from going but ultimately he knows you’re going to go. Now that you’re invested, or more invested anyways, now he can’t see immediately that you’re going to go and no matter how many times you tell him he isn’t going to believe it. He’ll find something to fixate on, something he perceives to be wrong with your relationship that you can’t overcome for whatever reason. With Tommy and I it was the fact that both of our fathers hate him, mine hasn’t gotten over it, and Tommy found a way around Oliver’s anxiety but I don’t know how. Either way now that you acknowledge that he might have a point about having a connection he’s about to backtrack fast,” she says.

Barry takes that all in and compares it to the things that Moira had said about him, like that people liked to use him for his looks and money and he let them. “Does that not seem… counterproductive to him at some point?” he asks.

“Not when he believes the end result is the automatic outcome no matter what happens in between the relationship starting and ending,” she says.

He sighs and wonders if Oliver was even worth the effort. Well, he was worth the effort, but was he worth _Barry’s_ effort? There were probably a whole slew of people far more qualified, and supportive, that could have been paired with Oliver so why him? He couldn’t deal with this, half the time he couldn’t deal with hair in the drain let alone serious anxiety issues. “By the way you have a terrible poker face and if he sees even a hint of doubt, and despite his playing dumb he is _very_ perceptive, he’ll use it against you. I hope you’re good at putting a spin on things because if you aren’t you’re out of your depth,” Laurel tells him.

Barry sighs, “I’ve been out of my depth since the beginning,” he says.

*

Half the time he forgot to take those sedatives that were prescribed to him and the other half of the time he learned that they didn’t really work all that well with his increased metabolism. Cisco offered to make him a new mix that would actually work with his boosted immune system and metabolism but he opted out at least for now. He hadn’t had dreams that had woken him up in a panic since Oliver came back from that island so he assumed that maybe they were gone now, probably by coincidence rather than Oliver’s return somehow curing him.

The last thing he expected was to dream, even less so to remember it because he never remembered his dreams. He was outside S.T.A.R Labs dressed in his streak uniform, and he _really_ needed a new name, when he turns to find the Hood standing there all creepy like. “What the hell are _you_ doing here?” he asks.

He imagines the Hood also looks confused but it occurs to him that maybe he was projecting his own feelings. “I don’t know,” the Hood responds and that was real damn helpful, not.

“Great. Go away,” he says, making a shooing motion in the Hood’s general direction.

“Why are we outside of S.T.A.R Labs?” the Hood asks, ignoring Barry’s instructions as per usual.

“Because we’re in a dream, idiot, nothing makes sense in dreams,” he says.

“Our conversation has made perfect sense thus far so I’m not certain where you’ve got that idea,” the Hood says, somehow managing to sound like a giant jackass through his voice manipulator. The man had a talent and a pretty stupid one in Barry’s opinion.

“The fact that I once had a dream that I owned a cat with spider legs and accepted this as a normal, everyday fact,” he says, managing to sound just as condescending as the Hood for once.

“You move at super speeds,” is the response he gets.

“That does not mean people own cats with spider legs, let alone enough to make owning one a normal thing to do,” he says, frowning. This dream was stupid, he decided, because it served no point. Wasn’t he supposed to dream about Oliver? Instead he was dreaming about this asshole.

“You’re irresponsible,” the Hood says, making one hell of a transition. Or a complete lack of one more like.

“You’re an asshole,” Barry snaps, annoyed with this conversation before it even started.

“That’s irrelevant. You need to learn how to properly deal with the people you go after, to stop underestimating them and overestimating yourself. Your speed shouldn’t be your greatest weapon; your intellect should be your greatest weapon. Not that you have much of that,” the Hood says and Barry was going to _strangle_ this guy.

“I’m smart fuck you very much, and I don’t rely too much on my speed,” he says, annoyed with the Hood’s criticisms.

“You pay no attention to where you run or what you’re running in to. If I put trip wires up all over this city it would take roughly four seconds for you to run into them, effectively severing your own feet. No more streak, problem solved. The fact that criminals haven’t already thought of that is nothing short of a miracle for you,” Hood says.

So maybe he had a very, _very_ good point about that trip wire thing, and maybe he should case things out a bit more, that didn’t mean the Hood was better than him. “I can see that you’ve realized I’m right,” the Hood says and Barry makes a face.

“Making one good point doesn’t mean you’re right about anything, you don’t even _know_ me so why do you care? I certainly don’t care about you,” he says in a snarky tone.

The Hood laughs, “if you didn’t care about me you wouldn’t be so offended that I don’t match your fairy tale assumptions of what a hero is. I don’t care about you, but you seem familiar somehow, like I know you,” the Hood says and Barry wished he could have heard that without the voice manipulator. He could have gotten a much better feel for him as a person and maybe he could get some damn answers.

“If you didn’t care about me you wouldn’t be so pissed off that I could run into trip wires at any moment and cut my own feet off,” he says, adopting the Hood’s own arguments. The Hood shifts, irritated by Barry’s words and he can’t help but feel victorious about it. If he had to suffer so did the damn Hood.

“Well if you weren’t such a moron I wouldn’t have to care about your stupid feet or where you put them. And stay out of my city,” the Hood says in what Barry thought was an indignant tone.

“You stay out of my city!” Barry counters, just as indignant.

“ _Barry_!” someone yells and he wakes up with a start to find Iris looming over him, “I think you’ve got Oliver’s sleep patterns again,” she tells him.

He groans and throws his arm over his eyes, “god, first I have this stupid dream about the stupid Hood, which doesn’t even make any sense because I’m supposed to dream about Oliver, and now I lost my sleep patterns again.”

“At least you didn’t absorb the super grumpy part of that because Oliver is pretty bitchy in the morning,” Iris says, “now get up and tell me about this weird dream. You don’t usually remember your dreams, which would be weird on its own, but you were mumbling about staying out of your city? And cutting your feet off? Please tell me you remember what that last bit was about,” she says, looking worried.

He lies, because he doesn’t have much choice, but only about the feet thing. He fills her in on the Hood yelling at him for being annoying and reckless as he puts actual clothes on and Iris thinks it’s hilarious. “Aww, that’s cute,” she says, ushering him out the door and Barry doesn’t even remember what they were supposed to be doing today.

“It is not Iris, I’m not even supposed to be dreaming about the Hood, I’m supposed to be dreaming about Oliver. And why did I remember it? I never remember my dreams. Except that one with the cat with spider legs, and that one with the mice preforming the nutcracker but that’s because they freaked me out,” he says, “and what are we doing? Did we even have plans?” he asks. He didn’t remember making any plans with her but he was admittedly drawing a blank at the moment.

“I stopped in because we both had the day off and I thought we could do a shopping trip!” she says excitedly. That made exactly one of them. He loved Iris, but he did not love her shopping habits nearly as much. “Oh don’t look so upset Barry, its fun!” she says, clapping her hands together.

“I… fine but only because I need new shoes,” he says. Again. This was the third pair this month that he had accidentally worn out and this time he was going to get Cisco to do something to the soles to keep them from falling apart.

“Didn’t you just get new shoes?” she asks.

“There was an unfortunate lab accident,” he lies. The truth was that there was an unfortunate incident that involved a really big asshole and a little old lady and her purse and his running killed yet another pair of shoes.

*

It turned out Iris had an ulterior motive to their meeting and that was to talk about Oliver _non-stop_ in some misguided attempt to try and convince him to give Oliver a chance. He was debating on telling her that Laurel had already convinced him so her efforts were useless but he had spent nearly an hour awkwardly helping her pick out lingerie for Eddy so. If he had to suffer so did Iris. She was basically his sister and except for those awkward teenage years when he had a weird and frankly vaguely incestuous crush on her he had zero interest. Now he had a bunch of mental images of Iris in lacy things she had no business exposing his poor brain to.

“So, uh, the media finally got ahold of you and Oliver. You wouldn’t believe the questions people are asking me about you,” she says.

“Just make stuff up,” he tells her and she raises an eyebrow.

“Barry when you were seven you used to want to be a peanut butter sandwich when you got older because you loved them so much. I really don’t need to make stuff up about you in order to get readers, you’re weird enough on your own,” she says.

“I figured everyone would be more interested in my father allegedly killing my mother but hey, if you think the sandwich thing is more interesting…” he says, trailing off.

Iris shuffles awkwardly, “yeah, Moira already did damage control on that, she’s having me write the story so… sorry,” she says, wincing, “but I thought I would be a lot more sensitive to the story than anyone else.” So she had a motivation within a motivation, Iris was sneakier than he thought.

“It was bound to come about eventually; I guess it might as well be you who writes the story. What’s your demon boss think of that?” he asks, genuinely interested.

She seems to examine him for a minute, trying to gauge whether or not he truly cared or not. He didn’t, he knew Iris would be sensitive to the issue and keep in mind that at some point he’d probably read the story and she’d try not to write something offensive. Other reporters wouldn’t give him the same curtesy and they both knew it so he genuinely didn’t care. “He’s actually pretty pissed but Moira was insistent that I write the story and she isn’t really someone you want to mess with. Seriously, the woman is frightening, you made her sound super nice and caring and stuff but she’s scary. She must like you,” Iris says.

Barry wondered what, or if, Moira had some sort of end game to her latest actions. He couldn’t see any sort of benefit to her but Oliver made it sound like everything she did was meticulously planned out so he must be wrong. Or Oliver was wrong and misread his mother’s actions, it wasn’t like the family as a whole had a very good dynamic, it was totally possible that Oliver was just reading his mother’s actions in a negative light because of it.

*

Oliver was pissed off that once again he had adopted Barry’s stupid sleeping patterns, except this time he retained his hatred for humanity like normal. “Oliver,” his mother says, gesturing for him to come in to her office. He grudgingly goes to get the interaction over with and to tell her to stop messing with poor Barry. He had no idea what he was dealing with and frankly it wasn’t fair to manipulate him for any purpose.

“Luckily for you I happen to be good at turning various situations around so that they are back in my favor. Laurel has paid Barry a visit and apparently it went well, he asked questions about you, which is an improvement in itself. Besides, if nothing he’s learned that Laurel learned to forgive you and what you did to her was far worse than what you did to him, if she can learn to move on so can he or at least that’s how he’ll see it. I also paid a visit to Iris’ boss about Barry’s considerably spotty past, the notes are on your desk, Iris is on the story. That will look good for both of us and believe me it is a rather sensitive story, it would be best to have someone who knows him write on it anyways-” Oliver decides to cut her off there.

“Mom, leave the poor guy alone and stop manipulating him, let him come to his own conclusions,” he says.

She sighs,” if I had done that, Oliver, he wouldn’t want anything to do with you, and for good reason, so I suggest you be grateful. Besides, I won’t be able to keep it up much longer; he’s incredibly intelligent and the longer he’s exposed to the way our dynamic works the more he’ll be able to figure out and faster too,” she says as if that made any of her meddling any better. She did have a point about leaving Barry to his own conclusions though, even if Oliver didn’t want to admit it.

“Our dynamic is really dysfunctional,” he points out. He’s done a lot of reflecting on the relationships in his life and aside from Felicity and Diggle they all sucked.

“We all have our parts to play in that, Oliver, now go off and do something that isn’t IMing Felicity all day. She’s very productive; it would be a shame for you to slow her down. Frankly she’s far too qualified to be your assistant anyway so I have no idea why she relocated to begin with,” she says. Nothing about her words or tone sounded suspicious but Oliver knew his mother far too well to believe that she held no interest. If she had focused enough to look through Felicity’s background to know her qualifications something had tipped her off and he needed to know what it was so she never found out more. He’d put Felicity on it.

When he goes off to his own office space to read whatever it was his mother dug out of Barry’s past he sure as hell didn’t expect to find a murder trial. Felicity, judging from the worried looks she had been giving him, already knew about the whole thing. He reads aptly, including Barry’s version of events, and the aftermath that followed, namely the questioning of Barry’s mental health. He wondered if any of those asshole reporters that spend entire pages tearing a kid to shreds felt bad now because Barry’s story was a lot less unbelievable with the streak running around. The lightning Barry described sounded exactly like that which followed the streak around, which meant his story had at least some truth to it.

Barry’s words from the other day at lunch seem to make a lot more sense now. _You don’t know me, and trust me; I know the crushing need to do right by my family._ He hadn’t really believed him, why would he? Barry’s circumstances were nowhere near his own, or so he had assumed, so how could Barry possibly know anything about doing right by his family? Not like Oliver anyways. In his dreams Barry never told him about this, he knew that he had been adopted by Joe but he didn’t know the circumstances behind the adoption. He supposed Barry was right, he didn’t know him very well despite his previous assumptions.

He was half tempted to track down the reporters that wrote half of this shit just to ask what the hell was wrong with them. Who the hell wrote this shit about a _kid_? Barry had only been ten at the time and even more surprising he had never wavered on his story, not even when literally everyone, Joe included, told him he was wrong. Not even when people questioned and continued to question his sanity.

Oliver wished he had strength like that.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I feel like being productive via posting fanfic lol.

It had been forever since Barry had spent any time with Felicity without any distractions via people interrupting or talking in passing before they each went off to do something else. Thankfully Felicity also didn’t seem to feel the need to spend all her time talking about Oliver in some sort of backwards attempt to get them to date. Not that he didn’t come up often, but she did work for the guy in her defense so he didn’t mind so much. “So now that we’ve established that Oliver Queen is literally the most boring person in the world to work for, what have you been up to?” she asks, smiling at him.

He wrinkles his nose, “not much, things have been a bit boring around the station,” he says. Mostly because he did most of the work police were supposed to do himself but it wasn’t as if he could tell her that.

She nods, “yeah, you guys have that… streak thing running around doing stuff. Literally, that wasn’t meant to be a pun but yeah, literal running,” she says awkwardly.

“Mm, yeah, makes our workload light though that Eddy asshole totally influenced Central’s cops into thinking the streak sucks. Well, I mean his name leaves something to be desired but like… that’s not his fault,” he says. Someone could _really_ come up with a better name any time now, like literally anything would be an improvement at this point.

Felicity raises an eyebrow, “so you approve? I didn’t think you would considering your opinions on the Hood,” she says.

“Okay but like the Hood kills people, the streak doesn’t, that makes it different. I mean the Hood’s premise was okay but then he went off and killed like half of the upper class instead of just redistributing their wealth,” he says. Had it been left at taking the money that rightfully belonged to other people it would have been fine but it wasn’t. “That doesn’t mean Lance’s crazy vendetta against the guy is okay though, his methods might leave something to be desired but the premise wasn’t bad. And what’s with his obsession with Oliver? Like if Laurel got over Oliver’s crap so can he, she was the one who actually got hurt,” he points out.

“So… if the Hood like… stopped killing people you’d be okay with him? And right? I mean I get being pissed off that Oliver broke his kid’s heart but get over yourself buddy, he went through five years of hell, isn’t that punishment enough?” she asks. Exactly what Barry thought too, it wasn’t as if Oliver wasn’t suffering already, anyone who had remained isolated on an island they probably thought they would die on had suffered greatly. He understood the anger at Oliver but jeeze, he would have thought that Lance would have assumed Oliver had got what was coming for him but instead he just made Oliver’s life worse. What a jackass.

“Marginally, yeah, and maybe if he wasn’t such a condescending asshole,” he says before he realizes that he would have had no way to know anything about the Hood’s behavior. Opps. Maybe Felicity wouldn’t notice that little slip. “And exactly, like what kind of Disney villain level asshole decides that five years of stewing in his own bad actions, isolationism, and suffering isn’t more than enough payback for the stupid crap Oliver pulled? Really, the guy needs to stop so Oliver can move on and like… not be the guy he was or something,” he says. Granted Oliver wasn’t the same person but he was only human, people seemed to expect him to be the exact same person he was pre-island and even though that made no sense and there was only so much pressure a person could handle before they did what was expected.

Felicity laughs, “‘Disney villain level asshole’? That is my new favorite description for people who suck,” she says, “and it’s very fitting for Lance. I don’t like him at all and he keeps putting this weird pressure on Oliver to be what he thinks he is instead of acknowledging that wow, five years of trauma might change a guy. Speaking of trauma though, Moira found out about your, uh, father’s trial, I didn’t help I swear but Oliver knows now too and he isn’t very impressed,” she says, wincing.

Barry rolls his eyes, “it isn’t as if I can help that everyone thinks my father killed my mom-” he starts; irritated that Oliver would be pissed off over something he couldn’t help.

“Oh, no not that,” Felicity says, cutting him off, seemingly realizing some mistake she made. “No he read the media coverage and he is not happy with the way people treated you,” she says.

He frowns, “what do you mean?” he asks, “but I did know that Moira found out, Iris told me, apparently she’s writing the story on it because Moira all but forced her boss to let her write it,” he says.

Felicity makes a face, “yeah, Oliver wasn’t impressed with that either, he told her to stop trying to manipulate you into doing what she wanted and let you come to your own conclusions. I’m pretty sure that last bit was a quote but whatever, that doesn’t matter. The media coverage though, I mean I didn’t read the stories because I already had your version and that was enough but when Oliver got mad about it I went through a few and _wow_. Barry, they were _cruel_ to you, even I was mad after reading some of the things people said about you let alone Oliver. Aren’t you like… upset about that at all?” she asks.

Oliver had told Moira to stop manipulating him and let him come to his own conclusions? He knew what Oliver’s family meant to him, that his family meant more to him that he meant to himself. That couldn’t have been an easy thing to do and Barry was impressed, and touched. That was… very sweet of him, actually. He didn’t really get the media thing though, people were just going to think what they believed anyways and there was no sense in being angry about it. He shrugs, “not really, it wasn’t like I could do anything about it,” he says.

Felicity shakes her head, “you’re a better person than me, I don’t think I could just let that go like you have,” she says. That might have been a bit strong though, it wasn’t like he wasn’t upset, he just didn’t see how acknowledging that was supposed to do anything for him.

*

Barry was personally offended that Oliver didn’t like Disney movies, who the hell didn’t like Disney movies? “I find animation boring,” he says in his own defense and Barry is _speechless_.

“You come to my house and you disrespect me this way? And what about the live action Disney movies? Are you saying you don’t like Pirates of the Caribbean? Because the first movie is amazing, I mean the rest are ehh, but the first one is great,” he says, fully prepared to fight Oliver on this if he needed to.

Oliver rolls his eyes and Barry prepares to kick his soul mate out because he could not be permanently linked to someone who didn’t love Pirates of the Caribbean, it was illegal. “I think Jack Sparrow is a boring stock character that Johnny Depp has been roped into playing over and over again instead of actually growing as an actor. I blame Sparrow for the downfall of his career,” Oliver says.

“In all my years I have never been so insulted-” he starts but Oliver cuts him off.

“You like pineapple _and_ anchovies on pizza, don’t you judge me when your food preferences are the cause of global warning,” Oliver says.

“My pizza is not causing global warming! And how did you even know that? I don’t order pineapple and anchovies when people are around because they judge me,” he says. One time he brought the idea up to Iris and she looked so disgusted he figured he’d just eat his preferred pizzas by himself in his shame cube. Well, his apartment, but it was sort of cube shaped so it worked.

“Anchovies probably caused the Spanish Inquisition,” Oliver says, “and you told me in a dream once. And that you only order them when no one is around from a pizza place across town so no one knows,” he says.

That was… oddly specific knowledge that Oliver shouldn’t have because it wasn’t something anyone knew. “Anchovies did not cause the Spanish Inquisition, Oliver, that’s just absurd. And what the hell else have I told you in your dreams?” he asks. Now he wished he remembered his dreams because this would be useful, assuming they were a shared experience or something. They were supposed to be but he had no clue how that worked is each ‘half’ of the soul mate was in a different time zone. How do you share dreams with different sleeping schedules? There was probably some stupid answer but he wasn’t willing to look it up.

“Not that you’re father allegedly killed your mother, which I would assume is more important than what you eat on pizza,” Oliver says. That was perhaps the worst conversation transition Barry had ever had the misfortune of hearing but Oliver looked dead set on getting some answers so he figured he would indulge him.

“Yeah well it isn’t exactly the best conversation starter. Like ‘hey, I’m Barry, your soul mate, my father was accused of killing my mother even though it isn’t true! How are you today?’ Like no, that just doesn’t make any sense,” he says. He got enough of that now, though with the end of the trial people were, thankfully, far less interested in matters that had nothing to do with them.

Oliver considers his words, “alright,” he says slowly, “I understand, sort of, but my finding out was inevitable so why not just tell me yourself? I would think it would be easier that way rather than reading some truly disgusting news articles,” he says.

“For you maybe. But then you’d ask what happened, and why I thought my father was innocent, and then eventually you’d think I was nuts because that’s what every-”

Oliver cuts him off, “there isn’t anything about your story that was completely out of the realm of responsibility even during the time that it happened. You talked about waking up and the liquids were acting strange, they did in your apartment the night you got struck by lightning, you said something about lightning circling your mom, that streak person generates lightning-”

“It was not the streak,” Barry says, offended that for the second time he had been inadvertently accused of killing his own mother. Though he couldn’t really blame Iris or Oliver for making the connection, but still.

“Okay, I have no idea why you got weirdly defensive about that, it isn’t like someone having similar powers to the streak is out of the realm of possibility. The point is what you described wasn’t as ‘crazy’ as everyone seemed to think it was, I mean Gotham exists and everything that’s even remotely screwed up goes to Gotham I swear. And even if your story was totally impossible that is no excuse for the slander you got for telling the damn truth, you were _ten_ ,” Oliver says, sounding fiercely protective.

He appreciated it, really, because when he pointed out Gotham’s general existence and all the weird stuff that seemed to happen there he was dismissed as a stupid child. Hell, he was an adult and people _still_ dismissed him more than they listened. “I… yeah, I guess. But I mean what am I supposed to do? I have my own set up to see if I can figure out what happened but that hasn’t really led to much,” he says. Not that he hasn’t tried, he’s tried, but there was only so much he could do with such limited resources.

Oliver examines him for a minute and Barry isn’t sure what he’s looking for but he gets the feeling that he doesn’t find whatever it is. “Does this not… bother you? Aside from the obvious being upset that your father is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, because you are weirdly blasé about this and I don’t see why,” Oliver says, frowning.

Barry shrugs, “well what else am I supposed to feel?” he asks, not entirely sure what Oliver was getting at.

“Uh, anger for one. Especially because you’re story is far less ‘crazy’ sounding with the streak running around, and even without that anyone should be pissed that everyone in their life abandoned them when they needed support the most,” he says, sounding far angrier with Barry’s situation than Barry himself was.

“I wasn’t abandoned by anyone Oliver, and I mean sure people said some unpleasant stuff but I don’t see why I should dwell on it. What’s the point?” he asks. He kind of thought Oliver was projecting his own problems but he kept that to himself for now because he got the impression Oliver had a lot more to say and Barry figured he’d let him explain himself.  

Oliver looks kind of like he wants to hit something but thankfully he seems to restrain that urge. “Barry not one person supported you or your statement even though you never once wavered when you told people what happened, over _years_ your statement never changed. That’s a pretty good fucking indicator that you were telling the truth, false statements don’t hold up over weeks let alone years and that isn’t including all the pressure that was put on you to change your statement. And where the hell was Joe? My mother has a lot of flaws, like a _lot_ , but she would _never_ let the media slander me like they did you. I think like three articles were published after I came back that blamed me for what happened, or suggested I deserved it, whatever, but all three were recalled pretty fucking quick. Why the hell didn’t Joe stand up for you? It isn’t like he needed to believe your statement to point out a bunch of adults treating a child’s trauma like a fucking joke is a god damn shitty thing to do,” Oliver snaps.

Barry hadn’t expected Oliver to have put that much thought into the situation, nor did he expect Oliver to believe his statement. Actually he hadn’t expected any support whatsoever, even Iris, who was his only real support system at the time had doubted his story and he knew it. But that didn’t make Oliver right, not exactly anyways. “Joe doesn’t have Moira’s resources, Oliver; it isn’t like he could just recall the whole trial. I’m pretty sure even Moira couldn’t do that. And Joe was there for me, just not the way you seem to think he should have been. He always told me not to let it bother me, to be the bigger person or-” he doesn’t expect Oliver to interrupt him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he snaps, looking far angrier than he had ten seconds before and Barry hadn’t thought that possible. “A bunch of adults decide it’s okay to say some incredibly horrible things about a _child_ who’s just been through a horrible trauma and instead of telling the adults to act like adults he tells the _child_ to act like the adult? Unbelievable. And as if that isn’t bad enough he told you not to let it bother you? What is he, insane? Why the hell would anyone tell a kid he can’t be angry about something he had every right to be angry about? So great, he taught you that when people treat you like shit you’re supposed to act like nothing ever happened instead of standing up for yourself. Thank god you didn’t absorb _that_ lesson,” Oliver says distastefully.

His first instinct is to argue against Oliver because he didn’t really think Joe did anything wrong, he was just doing his best, but Oliver made a point about telling _Barry_ to grow up instead of all the adults around him. “He was trying Oliver, and besides, it’s easier to be happy even when things suck,” he says. His argument was weak at best and he was sure Oliver knows it but it was still true, happiness was just easier than sadness or anger. It felt nicer for sure.

Oliver shakes his head, “ignoring people’s actions doesn’t make them right, and pretending to be happy all the time doesn’t mean you are and you damn well know it,” he says a bit too harshly. He seems to realize it too and he takes a breath, “sorry,” he says, “I’m not mad at you I just… I can’t believe that no one thought to support you, to tell you what you were feeling was valid instead of telling you to feel something else. Happiness doesn’t solve your problems and it isn’t something you should feel over everything else, it’s okay to be mad, especially when the people you’re mad at damn well deserve it. And it’s okay to not be the bigger person, you can’t always like rise above the situation or whatever, sometimes you have to be angry and bitter until you run out of steam. Then you can move on and stop feeling that way. People talk about being overly consumed by anger but that’s a hard emotion to feel all the time, most times you just sort of… stop feeling it one day because you’ve just gotten so exhausted with it. I don’t think people who talk about being consumed by anger have ever actually dealt with feeling only angry and pissed off all the time, otherwise they would know that,” he says softly.

Since he was considerably young he had always been told to turn the other cheek, forgive and forget, anger was bad, you don’t want it to take over, be the bigger person, whatever. He had no clue that he needed to hear that anger was okay until Oliver told him so and if anyone would know it was Oliver, it wasn’t as if he had a shortage or things to be angry about. Sometimes people still laughed at him, or rolled their eyes or whatever when he suggested a theory that was out of the box, remembering his statement about his mother’s murder and it pissed him off. Every time that happened he’d remember Joe’s advice about being the bigger person and it hadn’t occurred to him that maybe that was bad advice. Sure, it had its place, but people stopped taking him seriously a long time ago and he had learned to be a joke instead of fighting against it. “ _Thank_ you,” he says meaningfully, the tone of his voice doing a far better job at explaining his feelings than his words.

“Don’t thank me for telling you what you should have been told a long time ago, Barry, it isn’t something I deserve a pat on the back for,” he says.

Barry laughs softly, “maybe you don’t see it but I really needed to hear that and I appreciate it. You’re still wrong about Disney movies though, I think you should give them a chance, you might be surprised,” he says, smiling.

Oliver rolls his eyes and smiles at him, “I am not giving Disney another chance, I didn’t like the movies when I was a kid I doubt I’d like them as an adult. But for you I’d suffer,” he says.

“You hate fun,” Barry accuses, “but I do intend to make you suffer with Mulan, I _love_ Mulan.”


	11. Chapter 11

Reporters, Barry had decided, were the most irritating things on the planet, even worse than mosquitoes and those were horrible. He had at least learned to pick them out with a little help from Iris, who sympathized with his position even if she was in the profession Barry had decided needed to go. Reporters seemed to think his love life, or a more accurate lack thereof, was like… the most interesting thing happening currently. There were so many things that were actually worth reporting on and he had to deal with people harassing him on details about poor Oliver, whom Barry noticed reporters straight up avoided. When he asked how the hell Oliver managed that he had sheepishly admitted to punching a reporter in the face when he had grabbed Oliver’s arm. Barry figured the guy had it coming for harassing Oliver let alone aggravating the poor guy’s PTSD.

“I don’t normally condone physical violence but I’m kind of tempted to take that route,” Barry says, wrinkling his nose.

Oliver laughs, “well, you did tell that one reporter to shove his tape recorder up his ass,” he points out. Barry groans, remembering the incident well. He had been excited for like three seconds to have his sleeping patterns back before he ended up generally pissed off that people thought time, a social construction, mattered and that he cared about it too. The reporter that happened to be lingering outside the police station ended up being the victim of his anger though he had all but shoved the recorder up Barry’s nose so. Maybe he should have learned what personal god damn space was before he went and violated Barry’s.

“Yeah, I bit my asshole boss’s head off too, thankfully I was forgiven for that before I was fired but probably because I’m actually really good at my job and it would be kind of dumb to fire me,” he says. He was the best the department had actually, they had been sad to see him go but then he got stuck by lightning and became a superhero and he had decided to stick around so they hadn’t suffered for long without him.

“So I’ve heard,” Oliver says, “though according to Felicity everyone else seems to have trouble believing that.”

Barry rolls his eyes, “yeah, I can’t even count how many times I’ve offered up some theory that the rest of the department didn’t think of only to have them all roll their eyes at me, which pisses me off because I literally have an eighty five percent success rate. I did the math,” he says. It wasn’t as if the theories were based off nothing either, the evidence supported whatever alternative he offered but no; they all chose to question his sanity instead. What a bunch of assholes.

Oliver laughs, “you did the math? That is so hilariously petty, I get why you did it, but that’s hilarious,” he says.

“Well they still all roll their eyes at me even though I have a better success rate than they do, which makes them mad, but if they looked at alternative solutions this wouldn’t be a thing,” he points out. He pointed that out to his coworkers too and they had rolled their eyes at that too, which was aggravating to say the least.

“Then apparently they’re just pissed off someone they don’t think is credible does a better job at solving crime than they do, which is because they think in restricted ways as you pointed out. If they pulled their heads out of their assess they would realize that you’re right to organize things by evidence before assumptions, the way things should be,” Oliver says indignantly. _Finally_ someone got it.

“Right? Like you can’t just guess what happened before you have any evidence to back it up, even if you’ve seen stuff like it before because what if it’s different? Then you’ve framed the evidence around the argument instead of the argument around the evidence and that’s how people who didn’t commit crimes end up in jail,” he says. He, admittedly, had personal reasons for thinking that way but it didn’t make him any less correct.

“Exactly, you have to take an objective look at the evidence and based off what you have construct a theory that best fits what you’ve gathered, not assume all the evidence supports your theory because reasons,” Oliver says, rolling his eyes, “if only Lance would take a lesson in your thought processes.”

He sympathizes, really, because Lance was not letting Oliver-is-the-Hood thing go and there wasn’t much to support it. They had DNA but someone had screwed up the test or something because the results were gone and the so were the backup samples. It was Barry’s guess that the Hood managed to get rid of the samples, it was the easiest solution and the Hood almost certainly had the skills and know-how but he doubted any of the police would agree. They liked to think themselves infallible and he doubted any of them would accept that perhaps the Hood outdid them and broke into the station to destroy evidence even if it did make sense. “Lance is an asshole,” Barry says, “Felicity agrees. Hell, even _Laurel_ agrees and he’s her dad.”

“Laurel and her father have always had an… odd relationship. But that doesn’t make her any less right; there isn’t much, if any, evidence to support me being the Hood. Frankly I would have thought he would assume I wasn’t that smart,” Oliver says. Barry’s first instinct is to fight Oliver on the Hood being smart but that’s only because he wasn’t exactly fond of the guy having met him a few times. But the Hood was smart, incredibly so, enough to send every cop and reporter around in circles in Starling. Hell, even a few in Central too. None of the people the Hood essentially robbed, though even Barry would put that up for debate, had been able to find him either and it was hard to outrun money. Obviously the Hood was intelligent, overly so even.

“Pros and cons. So he admits you might not be a total moron, but he does throw you in jail for a considerable amount of time and he gets to watch you suffer. Pros outweigh the cons even if they make no sense and ignore the fact that you’ve suffered far more than what you deserved,” he says. Sure, pre-island Oliver was a right jackass and yeah maybe he deserved to suffer a little, but Oliver got far more than what he had coming. No one deserved what he got, even if he was an asshole before he got ditched on that island.

Oliver ducks his head, “yeah, I’m not so sure about that,” he says and for a second Barry feels _really_ guilty for no apparent reason but he shoves it aside.

“Well I am, _no one_ deserves to suffer the way you have, and all the trouble you must have had coming back. Just because you made some mistakes, even if they were admittedly pretty big mistakes, doesn’t mean you deserved any or the things that happened to you. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a total asshole,” he says fiercely. Lance, namely, because he refused to let poor Oliver move on with his life especially when he has clearly changed.

“You don’t know the half if it,” Oliver murmurs and that guilt is back again and again Barry pushes it aside.

“So what if I don’t? I’m sure it wouldn’t change my opinion,” he says, fairly sure of himself. There wasn’t a whole lot that would make him think Oliver had deserved that island, hell, even the Hood didn’t deserve that island and the guy was a murderer.

“That’s because you don’t know anything,” Oliver says. And here was that pulling back Laurel must have been talking about. Oliver needed to make up his damn mind about what he wanted.

“Then fill me in,” he says. He can practically _feel_ Oliver close himself off and he’s not much surprised when he quickly invents an excuse to leave. Well, okay then.

*

Oliver had no clue what to do because Barry was bound to leave if he even caught a whiff of who Oliver really was. He had Felicity do some digging; apparently he was not overly fond of the Hood so even if Oliver was inclined to tell him anything it was bound to go badly. And sure, maybe Barry believed he didn’t deserve the island thing now but if he knew anything about Oliver’s past, if anyone knew anything about Oliver’s past, he was sure to change his mind.

Felicity sighs, “or you could like… actually tell him stuff instead of keeping everything a secret, that’s an option. A healthy one too, considering you don’t trust anyone,” she says.

“I trust you,” he says, “and Diggle.” Sort of. Mostly. They were there when he needed them and that was far more than anyone else he had dealt with thus far, his family included though in their defense he wasn’t exactly honest about when he needed them for them to be there.

She shakes her head, “no you don’t. You trust us to not get you killed, knowing we aren’t about to let you die doesn’t equate to much trust at all. And fine, don’t trust us, but you spent all this time chasing after Barry and now you’re about to pull away pretty much because you don’t want to give someone the power to hurt you. But guess what Oliver; you’re already hurt by the prospect of leaving so he already has that power. You might as well make it work for you,” she says. She was far more intuitive than he would like sometimes, like now, because he didn’t have a logical argument against that.

“You don’t understand,” he says, looking away. She didn’t, she had no idea what it was like to be him, to live with the things he had done.

“You don’t give me a chance to,” she says and he winces. One of the things he liked, and hated, about Felicity was her willingness to tell the truth even when it hurt. Right now he wasn’t overly fond of the quality because he didn’t want to hear it because she was right. He didn’t give anyone a chance to understand, mostly because there was no understanding the things he had done. Why bother to try when he already knew how it would end?

“There’s a reason for that,” he says.

Felicity rolls her eyes, “yeah, I know, I’ve heard it only a million times. I get that you must have done some pretty crappy things, you weren’t exactly given much choice, but you have a choice now and instead of doing something with it you stand there paralyzed as if that’s your best option,” she says.

“And what do you suggest?” he snaps, irritated with this conversation.

“I suggest you do literally anything else because secrets will be the end of you even if you’re too damn stupid to see it. Secrets almost got you killed before you let Diggle and I help you, I don’t know why you think secrets won’t kill you now,” she says and with that she leaves.

Because he chose them, specifically, to help him. He didn’t choose Barry; he probably wouldn’t have either, for his purposes. Not that he didn’t think Barry would be helpful, Barry had a lot to offer, but he wasn’t much willing to let Oliver play the leader. He’d question everything, Oliver wouldn’t be able to get anything done with Barry questioning every decision he made and undoubtedly coming up with solutions he would think were better. Felicity and Diggle knew how to follow orders, Barry would only listen if he agreed, or if he trusted Oliver explicitly and he doubted either of those things would happen. So while Felicity’s solution to his problems might sound fine to her they simply weren’t realistic, he couldn’t just _tell_ Barry he was the Hood, or anything else, he had no clue what Barry would do with that information.

*

The media was getting on Barry’s damn last nerve and he was about eighty percent sure he was absorbing martial arts knowledge from Oliver. How the hell else would he know how to take down three reporters in like five seconds? Actually, how the hell did _Oliver_ know that? It didn’t matter; he was just super tempted to use the knowledge to break a few noses. He probably could have let it go, let bygones be bygones or however the hell that saying went but then some idiot asks if he had anything to do with the boat Oliver had been on pre-shipwreck going down. Barry laughs harshly, “oh yeah, I orchestrated the whole thing, I mean like I can totally control the weather from halfway across the world to create a hurricane. Oliver was supposed to die but hey, we all make mistakes,” he says sarcastically.

The fucking reporters jump on it too, flinging about a million questions at him before he finally, mercifully, manages to escape into his apartment building. The story was _fake_ ; obviously, people couldn’t control the weather from across the world. He did run into a metahuman that could control the weather though so it wasn’t completely out of the question, but come _on_ , what idiot would actually believe that story?

As he would come to find out a shocking amount of the population did not, in fact, understand sarcasm. “I told you not to catfish the media!” Oliver says over the phone, sounding annoyed.

He wasn’t the only one, “I didn’t catfish the media; I made a sarcastic comment and the media catfished themselves. I said I controlled the weather from _across the planet_ , Oliver, what idiot would believe that?”

“Most of Starling, Barry,” he says, irritated.

“Starling’s a bunch or morons,” Barry mumbles, earning a gasp of outrage from Oliver. “Don’t gasp at me Oliver, a city of grown people has chosen to believe a person controlled the weather from the other side of the world to kill his soul mate. If I wanted you dead I probably would have just stabbed you or something like a normal human,” he says.

“Please, _please_ , do not tell the media that you would have just stabbed me. Don’t say anything, like ever again. This is worse than your emo phase,” he mumbles and Barry gasps.

“Felicity showed you the pictures? She’s sworn to secrecy! I’m showing you pictures of her goth phase in college!” he decides. He had those pictures as collateral, damnit, and he was not afraid to use them.

“Felicity had a goth phase? I have to see that,” Oliver says, “after I deal with the whole city thinking you tried to kill me. Please refrain from speaking to the media for… ever if possible,” Oliver tells him.

“Oh Ollie. If I could avoid the media forever that would be _fantastic_ but unfortunately they think I’m interesting so I suspect they will harass me for some time to come,” he says. The blasting in and out of his apartment was difficult to hide on its own, start involving the media and it was ten times worse. Thankfully he had started to get creative and it was sort of fun, sometimes he and Cisco hung out and mapped ways in and out of his apartment.

“Ollie?” Oliver says, sounding surprised and a little touched.

“That is your name, is it not?” he asks, pulling leftover pizza from the fridge. The best thing about his increased metabolism is that he could eat literally anything with no effects because his body processed everything so fast. The downside? No getting drunk and medicines only worked for like three seconds unless the dosage was insanely high. Cisco was jealous up until he learned about that, then he pointed and laughed for a good ten minutes while Caitlin pretended to shush him for being rude. She thought it was hilarious too, after she had gotten over her massive hangover.

“I… not many people use the nickname, it’s kind of nice,” Oliver says and he sounds as if Barry dragged the damn comment out of him.

“No need to sound so resentful over something you thought was nice, Ollie. Now seems how I totally catfished the media can I like… just continue to do that because this is kind of fun,” he says and laughs when he gets a resounding _no_ from Oliver. Barry decides that Oliver probably knew best, he was the one who’d been dealing with the media his whole life but that didn’t mean Barry didn’t think about it. Come on, how was he to know that people were far dumber than anticipated? He had faith in humanity up until that point, now he was a little shaky on the faith because seriously. People actually believed a comment that was obviously meant to be sarcastic.

*

He was god damn pissed off at Oliver.

He _loved_ nachos but no, stupid Oliver hated nachos and now he was stuck staring at Cisco’s delicious meal and wanting to eat it objectively, but his stomach rolled at the thought. He had sent no less than twelve texts to Oliver complaining about this only to get a novel of a response because apparently Oliver did not believe in multiple texts telling him to suck it up. He ate Taco Bell, which Barry was sure was meant to be said like it was a bad thing, but he saw no issues with Taco Bell. Of course now that sounded gross too.

“So if you don’t want nachos what do you want?” Cisco asks, correctly assuming that nachos were life.

“Clams. Fucking _clams_ , Cisco. Over _nachos_. Oliver is the most disgusting human I have ever had the misfortune of being inexplicably and permanently connected to,” he says. He was going to pay Oliver back for this… somehow. At some point he would come up with a plan but for now he gave the nachos a forlorn look of longing.

“That’s disgusting dude, clams were like… invented by the devil,” he says, shoving a very loaded chip into his mouth.

“He doesn’t like chocolate either. Who doesn’t like chocolate?” Barry asks. He had found that out earlier when he had gone to eat one of those homemade protein bar things Cisco made for him to keep him from fainting only to find that he had to choke the thing down because god damn Oliver hated chocolate.

“Wow, that sucks,” Cisco mumbles around his nachos and Barry was going to kick his ass because he was totally doing this on purpose.

“I hope you know that I’m going to get you for this,” he says. Cisco snorts and continues to stuff his face with nachos just so that Barry can suffer.

_Who doesn’t like chocolate?_ He texts Oliver, irritated with his food tastes as of late.

_People with taste_ is the response he gets and no. That was not right, he had taste, he loved chocolate, Oliver needed to stop that.

_Now I want fucking chocolate. I hate chocolate_.

Barry glares at the screen of his phone.

_If u eat chocolate I’m disowning u_

_*You_

Barry ignores Oliver correcting his god damn grammar; ‘u’ was just easier to text, okay? A few minutes later Oliver sends him a picture of a chocolate bar and Barry decides that he is going to get a new soul mate. Like Cisco, he liked nachos, and chocolate, and he probably wasn’t nearly as awkward, and his family… actually he knew nothing about Cisco’s family so. But other than that, optimal soul mate conditions.

_Cisco’s my new soul mate_.

Oliver responds with a picture of him and Felicity eating chocolate and yeah, Cisco was definitely replacing Oliver.


	12. Chapter 12

The last thing he expects is to find Thea Queen on his door step, “uhh? Hi?” he asks, trying to remember if they had even met before this. He was pretty sure they hadn’t.

“Hey, I’d introduce myself but you know who I am. Can I come in? My family is a bunch of assholes and I’m tired of dealing with their shit and you are too so like, we can bond,” she says, “also I brought wine.”

The wine is what sold him, until he remembered that she was underage, “you… technically aren’t allowed to drink,” he says, sensing that he should probably tread lightly on this particular issue.

She rolls her eyes, “you’re like… the police so I mean it isn’t like I don’t have good supervision. Plus its wine, I’m not drinking alcohol I’m drinking grapes,” she says, “besides, it’s the good stuff,” she says, removing said bottle from her bag and oh, it was the good stuff that he couldn’t afford because he was poor.

“I… you’ll just go get drunk elsewhere if I don’t let you in, won’t you?” he guesses, figuring if Oliver was to be believed she was just as self-destructive as he had been at this age and he probably should make sure she didn’t do anything stupid.

“If I say yes will you let me in?” she asks.

He wrinkles his nose, “that sounds creepy, and fine, but only because I don’t want you getting drunk somewhere and like… falling asleep in a dumpster or something,” or worse, “and it isn’t like I can get drunk anyways so.”

“Oh come on, I’m sure a half a bottle of wine could get you at least a _little_ buzzed,” she says. Yeah, not even.

“I have a very high alcohol tolerance, I could drink that whole thing and not be even remotely buzzed,” he says as she walks past him and into his apartment. He tries not to feel like a creep and debates on texting Oliver but he got the impression that if he did that Thea would leave and then definitely do something dumb.

“I have _got_ to see that,” she says, rising to a challenge he didn’t realize he set and great, if he drank the whole thing no underage drinking and he’d be far less of a creep!

“Well if you’re willing to give me that bottle of wine,” he says and Thea hands the thing over right away. Great, now he didn’t have to worry about minors drinking in his apartment because they would go elsewhere and maybe hurt themselves. Excellent. Now to distract her before she changes her mind.

“So what makes your family screwed up enough to show up here?” he asks, moving off to the kitchen to try and put some distance between them. Couldn’t she have like… called or something? She could have stolen her number from Oliver; he stole it from Felicity to chew his ass about the media thing.

“An intervention,” she says with distaste.

He snorts, “oh my god they staged an intervention? I would have paid actual money to see that, honestly that must have been a disaster,” he says, laughing to himself.

“See, you get it! Why the hell do I need an intervention when Oliver doesn’t need therapy? He needed therapy _before_ the island but no, I get the fucking intervention,” she snaps, rolling her eyes.

“Maybe Moira thinks you’re like… easier to salvage. Like maybe she just thinks Oliver is too far gone so she didn’t even bother, he is pretty stubborn when he wants to be,” he points out. Though he got the impression that Thea was just as stubborn, if not more.

She looks surprised by his statement though, “oh. I hadn’t thought of that, do you think that could like actually… be a thing? Because Oliver has always been the favorite, she _always_ spends so much more time and effort on him,” she says in a resentful tone.

Barry hadn’t gotten the impression Moira had a favorite and he was good at these things. “Yeah, I mean it makes sense. And I don’t think Moira spends more time with Oliver because she favors him, Oliver just needs a _lot_ of attention; she probably assumed you were fine on your own. I mean she was obviously wrong but still,” he says.

Thea narrows her eyes, “what’s that supposed to mean?” she asks. God, he forgot how volatile teenagers could be.

“It means her assumptions that you were fine on your own led to you thinking she cared about Oliver more than you, which I don’t think is true,” he says. Plus all that self-destructive behavior but if he mentioned that she’d run and he figured she was probably safer here. Oliver did stupid shit still when something didn’t go his way, he figured Thea was worse.

Thea shuffles, looking guilty for assuming Barry was talking about something else even if he sort of was, she just didn’t know it. His phone rings and he glances at the screen, frowning, “who the hell even calls people anymore?” he asks, eyeing Oliver’s number suspiciously, “hey,” he answers.

“Have you by any change seen my jackass sister?” he asks in way of a greeting.

“Well hello to you, too, Oliver,” he says and Thea glares at him, “and yeah. She’s here, she didn’t take well to your intervention, which was probably a pretty stupid idea by the way,” he says, hoping Thea would stick around if he defended her. She did sort of need a defense, Oliver was in far more need of an intervention than Thea, she’d probably grow out of her bad habits.

“It was not, she’s been out of-” Barry cuts Oliver off.

“She’s been exactly like you, and you didn’t get an intervention,” he points out. In the back ground he notices Thea nodding along with what he was saying. Great, at least she wasn’t running off to go do something stupid elsewhere.

“Yeah and look what happened, if someone had actually told me no-” Oliver starts and Barry cuts him off again.

“If someone told you no you would have run off to Tommy’s so you could continue to do stupid shit, don’t act like you would have listened because you wouldn’t have,” he says, not actually having to fake it for Thea’s benefit. He’d know, he did stupid things as a teen too no matter how many times Joe told him to stop. He’d been pissed off at his father’s trial, not that he had ever let it show, so he snuck out a lot and wore studded belts. That was tame in comparison to Oliver and Thea but hey, he was pissed off on a budget and he couldn’t actually let anyone know he was mad lest he get the ‘be the better person’ speech.

“ _Exactly_ ,” Thea says from the living room, throwing her hands up in frustration at Oliver’s lack of understanding.

“I just want what’s best for her,” Oliver says sourly.

“Then ask Thea what’s best for her, telling her what was best for her obviously didn’t do much good and from what I’ve gathered she doesn’t feel like anyone talks to her at all, which is the problem,” he says, looking over to Thea to see if he had gotten that right. Judging from her reaction he had. All she wanted was some attention so she did what Oliver did to get attention, do a bunch of drugs, drink too much, and date someone from the wrong side of town. Granted Laurel was probably actually good for Oliver, and Roy didn’t seem like a bad person from what he’s heard, but the premise was the same and it hadn’t worked so well for her in the end.

“I… She… I’ll be there soon to pick her up,” Oliver mumbles, hanging up. He sighs and sticks his phone back in his pocket wondering how the hell he ended up dead centre in the Queen family drama.

“How is it possible that you get it after like three words but none of them get it? And I can’t believe Oliver listened to you! I mean I figured he would but come on, he wouldn’t even let me speak!” she snaps. Barry sighs; this was going to be a long night.

*

It took like three seconds of watching Oliver and Thea together to figure out what was wrong. They both wanted the other one to do what they wanted and neither one was willing to do that. “You need to stop the drugs and the drinking,” Oliver yells.

“Or what, I’ll get abandoned on an island for five years? It’d be preferable to spending time with you!” Thea yells back and _okay_ maybe it was time to step in.

“The two of you both need to stop giving me a headache,” Barry says, “and has it occurred to either of you that yelling at one another without actually listening to what the other one is saying is creating more problems than its solving? Like the headache I now have,” he says, feeling compelled to point out his head hurt because he couldn’t even take medication for it. Thank god he and Iris got along, this sibling dynamic was total shit and he wanted nothing to do with it.

“What the hell are you even trying to achieve with this?” Oliver asks and Barry rubs his temple. Did either of them even hear him? He had no clue. He eyes the bottle of wine and decides he might as well drink it, at the very least he deserved it for putting up with World War Three in his living room.

“I figured if I was loud and annoying like you, the favorite, maybe someone would pay attention to me for once,” she snaps.

Oliver looks confused, “the fuck do you mean the favorite? _You’re_ the favorite,” he says. Oh great, now neither one of them knew that Moira didn’t have a favorite. Barry remains silent lest his poor head hurt even more if he chose to get involved with this drama. He texts Cisco that World War Three is currently unfolding in his apartment and promises to keep him updated. Cisco thought his plight was hilarious.

“I am not, you’re the one who gets all the attention, no one ever pays attention to me,” she says.

“Thea mom pays more attention to me because I’m a giant fuck up, not because she loves me more. You’re the one she loves more, do you have any fucking idea how many times she told me to be more like you? It was always ‘why aren’t you more like Thea, Oliver?’, ‘why can’t you get good grades like Thea, Oliver?’, ‘why can’t you stay out of detention like Thea, Oliver?’, ‘can’t you just show up on time for once the way Thea does, Oliver?’. I used to hate you, you know that? You were the perfect fucking kid and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t live up to you, and I tried damnit but god help me if I could ever reach the angelic bar you set,” Oliver snaps.

“Oh please, that is not true. Mom always wanted me to be more like you, I always heard shit like ‘be more outgoing like Oliver, Thea’, ‘why can’t you stand up for yourself the way Oliver does, Thea?’, ‘why don’t you have more friends like Oliver does, Thea?’, ‘can’t you play sports like Oliver, Thea?’, ‘be more like Oliver, Thea’. And then you died and I felt so fucking bad because the first thing I thought was great, finally mom might pay attention to me but no, that didn’t happen. She was too busy paying attention to the fact that you were gone to notice I was still here,” Thea snaps, sniffling and angrily whipping at her nose.

_Update: Moira thinks they both have admirable qualities_

_They did not know this_

_They assumed Moira loved the other sibling more_

_Also Thea was glad Oliver died_

_She felt bad about it tho_

Barry finishes typing the flurry of texts to Cisco and wonders how the hell this even happened. Jesus these people were such a mess he was tempted to call Iris just to tell her that he loved her and cared about her. She’d probably think he wanted something though and it was also a Friday, she was probably out doing things and being social while he sat in Queen hell. No wonder Oliver had no clue how to do relationship things, his family was so damn dysfunctional he and Thea didn’t even realize that, surprise, surprise, Moira loved them both.

He sighs and prepares himself to spend the next however long wading through whatever other bullshit was going to explode in his poor, innocent living room. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get rid of Oliver now, how could he? The poor guy needed so much fucking help and love and he clearly wasn’t getting it from his family, neither was Thea. Moira, he was sure, just didn’t know what her children needed because she certainly cared more than enough about them.

“Christ, Thea, you can’t blame mom for grieving for me,” Oliver says.

Thea rolls her eyes, “it wasn’t like I wasn’t sad too, I gave her time to grieve, but I figured after two years of you being dead she’d realize that she still had one kid that was alive. But no, I guess I hoped for too much and then you came back and everything went back to the way it was before so I figured fine, she wants fucking Oliver I’ll _be_ Oliver. But that wasn’t good enough either, now she wants me to be me. Like, I wasn’t good enough before, the hell makes either of you think I’d be good enough now? Is two Olivers too much to handle? Should have thought of that before I learned the only way to get any love was to be my fucking brother,” she snarls, harboring more anger than what was probably necessary considering this wasn’t Oliver’s fault.

He supposed if nothing else he actually had some Queen secrets to sell now, but they all sort of sucked.

_Update:_

_This is some Dr. Phil level shit_

_I’m so not prepared for this_

_The universe set my soul mate_

_On the hard setting_

_Like expert level_

_I’m a fucking beginner Cisco!_

“Why the hell would you ever want to be me, Thea? Mom loved you just fine before, trust me, she compared me to you more than enough for me to know that. Everything I did was wrong and all the stuff you did was right and now mom blames me for all this shit with you because obviously the good one got fucked up by the shit one. I mean where the hell else did you get all your bad habits? You all but said it was my fault too. The reason mom’s so mad about you acting like me is because I was never the favorite and now she’s stuck with two shit kids,” Oliver says, also harboring far too much anger at someone who was not at fault for his feelings.

Barry rubs his temples and sighs. Neither of them were listening to each other _still_ and their problem was that they had really _really_ bad communication issues. He knew Oliver had issues, and the rest of his family for that matter, but this was far beyond what he imagined. How the hell was he supposed to know how to help Oliver here? He had no clue what was going on and neither, evidently, did anyone else. This was way out of his depth and with his luck he’d just screw everything up more and that was the last thing Oliver needed.

Thea wipes her nose again and she happens to look in Barry’s direction when she does it, “god Barry, you look terrified,” she says, drawing Oliver’s attention to him.

Great, now Oliver was looking guilty and upset because he probably though Barry hated him now or something. “I… you… has it occurred to either of you that maybe you’ve stuck each other on pedestals in your mother’s eyes that neither one of you have ever sat on outside of your own perceptions? Because I don’t think Moira has a favorite, I think she loves you both in some considerably unhealthy ways considering what she’s willing to do for you both. To be completely honest here I don’t have the qualifications to offer you two advice, I’m a forensic scientist, I didn’t learn things about people of the living persuasion. You guys need some like… professionals,” he says.

Oliver laughs, thank god, because it was either that or he bolts and Barry didn’t want that. “I think we’re past the point of professional help at this point,” he says.

“God the only thing that’s worse than an intervention is family counseling. I am not sitting with some dipshit with a diploma listening to all the boring psychobabble that comes out of their mouth. I have better things to do,” Thea says.

“Agreed,” Oliver says. Well that was improvement at least, even if it was in the wrong direction because they both obviously needed someone to talk to and they sure as hell weren’t talking to each other.

“Do you really think I’m the favorite?” Thea asks after a few seconds of silence.

“Hell yeah, and I don’t really blame you for being happy I landed on that island. If it was you I probably would have been happy because then maybe mom would think I was good too,” Oliver says quietly.

_Update:_

_They have started to make up_

_I’m gunna need some self-help books_

_To help myself_

_Or Oliver_

_We will see_

“God we’re idiots,” Thea says. Yeah, Barry would mostly agree with that though he supposed they were at least trying.

Oliver sighs, “yeah. Who knew we thought the other one was the favorite?” 

“Did mom actually tell you that you should be more like me?” Thea asks.

“All the damn time, it was why I was so mean to you all the time. I resented the fact that mom liked you better, that she thought you were the one I was supposed to live up to. Ask Laurel, I used to complain about it all the time,” he says.

“Oh. Laurel always used to say that you didn’t really hate me but I didn’t know what that meant until now. Does this mean I don’t have to go to rehab? Because I’m not going to rehab, I’ll just come live with Barry,” she says and she means it too, he can tell.

“Uh-” he starts but Oliver cuts him off.

“Better than living on the streets I suppose, I’ll talk to mom,” he says.

“Uh, do I get a say in this? Because I think I should get a say in this,” he says.

“I’ll pay your rent,” Thea says.

“Deal,” he says before thinking better of it. Great. Now he was going to be the teen babysitter if Moira decides to follow through on sending Thea to rehab. God damnit. At least the wine had finished breathing so he could drink that and be sad about the lack of effects.

“I can pay your rent now, if you want,” Oliver offers, and he even gives him an option.

He grins because Oliver was learning, “thanks but I can earn my own keep,” he says.

“How come Thea can pay rent?” he mumbles, looking like a kicked puppy.

“Because he likes me better,” Thea chirps, smiling.

“Does not,” Oliver says, looking adorably offended at the possibility that Barry could possibly like Thea better than him.

_Update:_

_They r squabbling over which 1 I like better_

_Thea says being strangled is not sexy_

_Oliver says fighting in the living room is not sexy_

_They r not wrong_

He drinks the wine while the two siblings try to come up with reasons as to why Barry might like them better. Oliver ends up quasi-winning with being hot and of age, unlike underage and definitely out of bounds Thea, which, duh.

_Omfodfgb_

_I’m fucking pissing mys,fl_

_Cait is confuseds_

_Hashahah_

_Who doh you li;ke beterr?_

He frowns at Cisco’s replies and shakes his head. Touch screen key boards did not agree with him whatsoever.

_Oliver_

_Duh_

_He’s the cute 1!_  

Eventually Oliver and Thea stop squabbling and Thea, mercifully, agrees to go home because Oliver agreed that he would actually talk to Moira. Barry comes closer to Oliver when Thea goes downstairs to poor Diggle, who must have been waiting with the car the whole time. “Are you okay?” he asks softly, making sure to keep some distance between them. Thea had made the mistake of going in for a hug and Oliver had all but jumped away from contact so Barry didn’t want to linger too close.

Oliver smiles, “actually yeah. Thea’s been so weird with me since I’ve been back and I didn’t really know why, I mean I know she didn’t take well to me telling her what to do but obviously there was way more to it than that. Sorry about the argument in your living room though,” he says.

Barry shrugs, “you two seemed to work it out, at least for now, so that’s what matters, that and that you’re okay,” he says.

“Thanks,” Oliver says, “really.”

“Isn’t that what soul mates are for?” Barry says, grinning. Oliver smiles too but this time it lights up his features with genuine happiness and Barry can’t help but feel a bit of pride for being the cause of that. 


	13. Chapter 13

“Iris is _convinced_ that Eddy is her soul mate and he obviously isn’t her soul mate,” Barry says. He knew it was a matter of time and having weird dreams about a police station did not mean Eddy was her soul mate, it meant she was having dreams about a police station. Even if the soul mate theory was legit he doubted it was Eddy, obviously whomever her actual soul mate was they worked for the police. That was a pretty huge amount of people.

“What makes you think that?” Oliver asks, sounding far more defensive than he should.

“Because she would have known, even I felt something when I saw you and I’m pretty leery of the whole soul mate thing. There is no way she could have missed that for all this time, they’ve been dating for like five months,” he says logically.

Oliver relaxes some, “oh, that makes sense. You felt something, when we met? I mean besides me strangling you,” he says.

“Way to make it awkward, Oliver,” he says because he was not going to bring up the strangling thing. They had moved past that or so he thought, “and yes, it was weird and kind of felt like I was struck by lightning, which I actually have a frame of reference for now so there’s that,” he says, shrugging.

He wasn’t expecting anything to come of the lame joke he made so when Oliver gets angry it catches him completely off guard. “Did you seriously just make a joke about being struck by lightning?” he snaps, throwing Barry for a complete loop.

“Uh-” he starts but Oliver cuts him off, probably because they technically both knew the answer to that. Yes Barry did, in fact, make an awkward joke about being struck by lightning and he wasn’t totally sure why Oliver would be mad about it but he assumed he was going to find out.

“You can’t just make jokes about nearly fucking dying, Barry; do you have _any_ idea how scared I was? For five years the _only_ thing that kept me even remotely sane was the dreams I had about you and suddenly you got struck by lightning and that was all going to go away and I wasn’t going to get any chance to fix my own screw ups and you _joke about it_?” he snaps, shaking badly and _wow_ that was not how Barry anticipated this conversation going. His first instinct is to reach out to comfort Oliver but that wasn’t going to work because Oliver wasn’t particularly fond of touch to say the least.

“Oliver it’s a defense mechanism, that’s just how I’ve learned to deal with things. My making a joke wasn’t meant to like… insult you or your feelings or anything, I’m sure that was really scary for you, but I don’t know how to deal with trauma without humor. It’s just easier to make a joke than it is to suffer,” he says. That was obviously not how Oliver dealt with things, from what Barry has seen he just internalized everything and the fuck if Barry knew what to do with that.

“Well I don’t find your near death experience very amusing and I don’t appreciate you making a joke out of one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to me,” Oliver says, crossing his arms, looking generally pissed off.

He had no idea what to do with that because humor was just his go to when bad things happened to him. It was just _easier_ to make light of things than it was do brood about it like Oliver did, he didn’t have the energy to waste on stewing in his own emotions like Oliver. Hell, he didn’t know how _Oliver_ had the energy to do that. “I… that’s one of the most traumatic things that’s ever happened to you?” he asks. In hindsight he realizes how stupid a question that was; of course it would be traumatic even if Oliver wasn’t invested in him at all.

“ _Yes_ , Barry, it was traumatic to see someone you’re quasi in love with dead on the ground. You didn’t end up being dead but it doesn’t stop me from being traumatized by it, and I didn’t dream about you for the entire time you were in a coma. For all intents and purposes the one thing I used to cope with everything that was happening around me was gone and I had no idea if I was going to get that back, and then of all the things you could have done you tell me that soul mates don’t exist. Do you even know how damaging that was-” Oliver probably could have continued but Barry cuts him off before he had too many issues to deal with all at once.

“Okay, okay, slow down, one issue at a time here. First of all my question was really stupid, obviously you would be traumatized by finding what you assumed was a dead guy on the ground whether or not you were invested in my life. It was pretty dumb of me to assume that you wouldn’t be traumatized by that. As far as the rest goes, I had _no idea_ I was playing any role in your life let alone an integral role. Frankly that puts some of your behavior into perspective, not that it was okay, but when I woke up I didn’t have any of the knowledge of soul mates that you did. It’s pretty easy to deny a reality you aren’t living and it is abundantly clear that I’m wrong about the soul mate thing. I mean I’m still skeptical, but the fact that we have an unexplainable connection to one another is an undeniable fact and I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you. I should have and I didn’t know, well, didn’t care what that did to you and that was wrong of me,” he says meaningfully.

Oliver takes a deep breath, clearly preparing to argue about it but once Barry’s words process he lets out the breath and blinks in confusion. “I… oh. To be honest I kind of expected you to fight me on that,” he says.

“I got that impression. But really, for years you had dreams about me, you thought I knew everything about whatever it was that happened to you on that island and did nothing, found out I didn’t _after_ you strangled me, and by then I wanted nothing to do with you. Then to make matters worse it turned out I was playing a huge role in your life that I didn’t know about, almost died, and when I woke up I denied everything you knew was true. That’s pretty shitty of me,” he says, “like genuinely terrible.”

“To be fair you didn’t have any context, some crazy dude who just strangled you and came on _way_ too strong claimed to be your soul mate. I’d backtrack the hell out of that too, it was probably pretty frightening for you,” he says. So it was, mostly because literally everyone kept telling him to just ignore Oliver’s blatantly terrifying behavior, but that didn’t make his actions right.

“I get that my actions were understandable but that doesn’t make them okay. I should have listened to you and heard you out instead of just assuming I knew your experiences better than you because that actually makes no sense at all. And you heard me out; I should have listened to you too so I’m sorry that I didn’t,” he says. Poor Oliver, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried to explain things, he just had no interest in listening, which certainly hasn’t done anyone any favors, least of all Oliver.

Oliver half smiles and looks down, “thanks. People don’t really listen to me a whole lot, not that I really listen either, but still. I appreciate the apology,” he says.

“Yeah, I got that impression with Thea though you seemed to have sort of worked it out. And sorry about making a joke about being struck by lightning, it’s sort of a knee-jerk reaction for me to joke about something that I don’t know how to deal with. It didn’t really occur to me that it would have any effect on you, which is just really insensitive actually. I didn’t mean to like… make a joke about a traumatic event for you so um… sorry for doing that,” he says awkwardly.

*

The night started out basically how every night went when Oliver stuck his hood on and went out to deal with whatever or whoever was plaguing the city this time. Only this time things went wrong and the streak wasn’t around to save Oliver’s ass from the poison he was injected with. None of them had even seen it coming because they had caught their guy, and girl too, when someone else appears on the scene and shoots Oliver. The weird thing was that whoever it was leaves it at that, clearly confident that Oliver would die from whatever the poison was.

Felicity and John bring him back like they always did but this was out of both of their depths. “Who would have the qualifications to figure this out and save him _and_ is someone Oliver would trust?” John asks, frowning at Oliver’s pale body. He looked less imposing like this, laying across a table all but helpless to whatever was destroying his system. He swears under his breath, “Oliver doesn’t trust anyone, half the time he doesn’t even trust us,” he says, rubbing his hands over his face.

“Barry,” Felicity says suddenly, “Barry’s a forensic scientist, he’d probably have at least a base knowledge of poisons and how they affect the body and Oliver trusts him. At least more than anyone else, anyways. He’s the only option we have,” Felicity continues as if John needed anymore coercion to choose that option. Felicity was right, Barry was all they had.

He wasn’t hard to find and he was even easier to kidnap, thankfully, because the formula John used to knock Barry out would put him under for at least an hour and he had no clue how much time Oliver had. He didn’t have time for Barry to put up a fight. “I hope Oliver doesn’t kill us for this,” Felicity says, gripping the wheel to the van tightly and staring straight ahead.

“Assuming he lives he’s going to be pissed that we _kidnapped_ Barry, probably more so that we gave up his secret identity,” he says. Oliver had been heading this off for some time now, telling Barry about the Hood thing. John had faith that Barry wouldn’t care, Oliver didn’t have much faith that anyone would care about him. It pissed him off but there wasn’t much he could do about it now.

“Great. Hope he doesn’t strangle us, I don’t like turtle necks because they look like neck condoms,” Felicity says and John snorts. Felicity’s response to stress never failed to make him laugh even if it was only once and wasn’t very real, like now, because she said the most absurd things. He liked to think it lightened Oliver up a little but truthfully there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to bring a little light to Oliver’s pissfit of loneliness. The guy had a complex and so far only Tommy and Barry had been the only ones to break through in any sort of useful way. Tommy brought some much needed humor to Oliver’s life and Barry called him on his shit far more than anyone else had the guts to. Including him and Felicity, and they did their fair share of pointing out Oliver’s shit.

They get back to the Hood Cave, they needed a new name for that, and when they open the back door to the van Barry is sitting up, fully conscious. “Okay I have no clue why you drugged me but just so you know that’s really creepy and I probably would have went willingly depending on what’s happening,” he says.

Felicity looks shocked, “I… you… um. Look, I know you’re not fond of the Hood but we need your help and-”

“There is no way that went through your system so fast, you should be unconscious for at least another half an hour,” he says, earning a look from Felicity. Something fishy was going on here and he didn’t like it.

“The Hood?” Barry prompts Felicity.

She flails around for a second, at a loss for words before she gathers herself, “just come with me, please?” she asks a little desperately when Barry raises an eyebrow. He does, mercifully, agree to hear them out and John keeps his eye on Barry. There was _no possible way_ that he could have woken up so fast when he had been drugged with such a heavy sedative.

Barry follows them down to the Hood Cave looking suspicious all the while. He wasn’t sure if that was Oliver’s habits or Barry’s own and it was difficult to tell because most people would be just a bit suspicious towards someone who kidnapped them. Felicity walks over to Oliver and sighs, “look, I know you’re not fond of him but he’s dying and… and…” Felicity trails off, unable to give Oliver away.

It was sweet, her loyalty, but Barry wasn’t going to help without the proper motivation, “it’s Oliver,” he says, “the Hood is Oliver and he’s dying. You were the only one we could think of who might be able to find an antidote to whatever he’s been poisoned with.” Barry handles that news well, John would give him that, because he only looked minorly shocked by this news. For a second he doesn’t do anything and Felicity deflates a little, probably thinking that Barry was going to refuse to help.

“Did anyone think to take a blood sample?” he asks, finally kicking back into action. They had and Barry flurries into action at a surprisingly high speed, seemingly uncaring about his opinions about the Hood now. He watches Barry work with Felicity, the two of them making a surprisingly good team as they figure out what the hell Oliver had been poisoned with to make the antidote.

They make quick work of it thanks to Barry’s seemingly endless knowledge on the subject and when asked he explained it away with being able to memorize facts easily. He was lying, John could tell, but he needed that knowledge so he kept his mouth shut for now. Let him fix Oliver and then he’d confront Barry about the strange number of coincidences in such a short time frame. He manages to put something together and hands it off to Felicity, who stares at the needle like it might stab her or something. He rolls his eyes and takes the needle, content to stab Oliver himself.

*

Oliver was the fucking Hood. He had been right when he had that weird debate thing with Iris. His dreams about the Hood weren’t weird dreams, he was _dreaming about Oliver_. Shit. So he wasn’t fond of Oliver’s methods but he wasn’t going to let him die and he’d hear him out after to see why the hell Oliver could have possibly thought _murder_ was acceptable. There had to be a reason, Oliver had to have some sort of reasonable explanation…

Or he was just making excuses for him because he didn’t want Oliver to be a killer. He focuses on the task at hand, making an antidote for Oliver, instead of focusing on all of the crap that was bound to come with Oliver being the Hood.

Thankfully the antidote works, Barry had no way to be certain and Oliver didn’t have enough time for him to run the proper tests. Oliver sits up and looks around groggily, blinking slowly as he tried to reorient himself before his eyes settle on Barry. He smiles and it lights up his whole face and Barry feels guilty. It wasn’t like he had meant to invade Oliver’s privacy, Felicity and Diggle made that choice for him, and he couldn’t just let Oliver die. He smiles weakly back, “hey,” he says softly, awkwardly waving.

Oliver goes to slide off the table he was on and that’s when he seems to realize what must have happened because he goes from looking happy to pissed in a matter of seconds. “We had no choice,” Diggle says, hands outstretched in front of him.

“Of course you did,” Oliver hisses, “why?”

“Because he was the only one we knew with the skills we needed to save you who you would also trust,” Felicity says, stepping forward a little. Barry leaves them be to get chewed out by Oliver, it wasn’t his fight.

Roughly a half an hour later Oliver comes outside to find him, or maybe just to get air given that Oliver looked surprised to find him there. “I’m sorry,” he says, ducking his head and looking away.

“No you aren’t,” Barry says, “you would have kept that little nugget of knowledge to yourself as long as you could have if Felicity and Diggle hadn’t outed you like they did. Not that I can be mad about it really,” he mumbles and sighs.

Oliver tilts his head to the side, “why can’t you be mad about it? I’d be pretty pissed if I were you,” he says.

“There are things that I am mad about, but living a double life as a pseudo-superhero and not telling anyone about it? I can’t be mad about that,” he says and runs around Oliver at top speeds before coming to a stop in front of him, “not without being an absolute hypocrite.” He was pretty sure Oliver hadn’t seen that coming because he looked totally stunned. Well, that left two of them in shock that the other was a totally different person than the other thought they were. Barry thought he won though, he had superpowers, Oliver was a murderer. At least his surprise was a little less… horrifying.  


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second last chapter y'all!

When Oliver had asked to train him he didn’t think anything would come of it, at least not like this. He figured Oliver would teach him a few things about had to hand combat, which he did actually need a lesson in and Cisco was a horrible teacher. As usual Oliver defied his expectations though except not in a good way this time. “You know what is less acceptable than strangling someone, Oliver! _Shooting in the back with fucking arrows_!” he yells.

“Stop wiggling, you have accelerated healing, you’ll be fine. Otherwise I wouldn’t have shot you. Plus that’ll teach you for not looking behind you,” he says, gripping Barry’s shoulder tight. “Take a deep breath account count to three,” he instructs.

Barry was going to deal with that screwed up logic later, but for now he was going to focus on getting the _arrows out of his shoulders_. “One, two, thre _ahhhhhhhh_!” he yells as Oliver yanks an arrow out.

“Be lucky it wasn’t one of the barbed ones, then I would have had to push it through, snip the end, and then push the rest of the shaft through. I had a feeling you’d get shot though so I used these ones,” he says and drops the arrow in front of him. The shaft was smooth and pointed into a sharp tip that Barry was curing to the high heavens.

“Fuck you, Oliver,” he snaps, too pissed off and literally hurt to care about Oliver’s feelings. He doesn’t seem to take it to heart though and he rips the other arrow out without warning. Barry, predictably, screams because that fucking _hurt_. He could feel the wound closing though so at least there was that. “If we could avoid literal torture in the future, Oliver, that would be lovely,” he snaps grumpily. He couldn’t _believe_ Oliver fucking _shot_ him. In the _back_. With _arrows_. “Now Cisco’s going to have to fix those holes,” he mumbles mostly to himself.

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. The red condom with eyeholes look? Not hot,” he says as if his own costume was even remotely appealing in any way. Yeah, that hood really got people off, Barry was sure of it.

“I do _not_ look like a red condom with eyeholes, and for the record it’s friction-proof, regular clothing wouldn’t hold up so it has a purpose. Unlike your costume, which looks like it was designed by a fourteen year old emo kid who thinks brooding guys in over-sized green hoods are sexy. Actually the pants aren’t horrible, you have a great ass and those pants cup it nicely but the hood? Emo kid. I’d know, I had an emo phase,” he says. Oliver looks downright appalled and Cisco was laughing his ass off in Barry’s ear.

“I don’t look like an emo kid designed my costume! And isn’t a costume, it’s a uniform thank you very much. Just because _you_ look like a bad comic book character with inexplicable lightning bolts attached to the side of your head doesn’t mean we all need to look like bad pop culture references,” he says, offended.

“Oh, _I_ look like the bad pop culture reference? _You’re_ the one who looks like a shit Bucky Barnes cosplay with that grease paint smeared all over your eyes. Next thing I know you’ll be all ‘who the hell is Oliver?’” he says sarcastically. “And the lightning bolts are comm devices that also look cool,” he says, defending Cisco’s fashion choices valiantly.

“Well if you can make me a mask that won’t fall off my face in the middle of a fight, doesn’t hinder my vision, and doesn’t look like a red condom with eye holes shoved over my head then I’ll wear it,” Oliver says, crossing his arms angrily.

“You guys have the cutest fights,” Cisco says in his ear, “I’ll get on the mask.”

“Make it the most hideous color you can,” Barry says and Oliver frowns before he seems to realize that Barry was talking to Cisco. “And I do _not_ look like I’m wearing a red condom with eye holes, stop saying that!” he says, offended that Oliver would think such a thing.

“You know what, next time we end up working together we’ll ask some rando on the street whether or not you look like you’re wearing a red condom with eyeholes and I will be proven right,” Oliver says smugly, crossing his arms.

*

Captain Cold was going to be the god damn death of Barry. So far Oliver had become annoyed that Len knew who he was outside of the costume, almost been shot with the cold gun twice, annoyed that Cisco even made the fucking cold gun, and even more irritated that Barry got shot with the cold gun diving in front to him so he didn’t get shot with the cold gun. Now Oliver was hanging from the ceiling, curled in a ball and well out of the range of the cold gun Barry had so valiantly dove in front of while Len made bad puns and stole stuff. “I’m going to kill him,” Oliver says, detaching himself from the arrow he had been hanging from and dropping to the ground.

“Don’t you dare, you promised you were done with that!” Barry snaps, awkwardly trying to grab Oliver’s hood so he didn’t go off killing people again.

“And I am, after I kill that guy,” Oliver says and Barry starts struggling harder, waving his one free arm around like a maniac.

“You get back here! At least chip me out of this damn ice,” he says, annoyed that he had even decided to take the metaphorical bullet for Oliver.

“For gods sakes, Barry, vibrate and the ice will come off. Why am I explaining how to use your powers to you?” he says in that trademark condescending tone and he was going to kick Oliver’s ass for that. It was bad enough that the training sessions had gone horribly wrong but now their city-saving was also going horrible wrong. He follows Oliver’s advice and vibrates the ice away, stretching his muscles to warm them up a bit before taking off to go get Oliver before he did something stupid.

The plus side to training with Oliver was that Barry now had a good idea of how he moved. So when he manages to catch up to him and Len battling it out, Oliver surprisingly not aiming to kill, he dodges the bow he nearly gets to the face. Oliver was annoyed he was now three blocks away from the scene of the crime but he could worry about that _after_ Barry dealt with Cold.

“Trouble in paradise,” Len asks, trying to freeze Barry all over again.

“Only the trouble you’re making,” he counters, dodging the rays from the gun and diving behind a car.

“Happy to help,” Len says, laughing as Barry tries to out run the cold that was now chasing him down. Unfortunately for one Leonard Snart Oliver seemed to have caught up with them because the gun goes flying out of his hands via a well-placed arrow. Barry was impressed; it didn’t even do any damage. Maybe he had actually learned a thing or two when Barry accused him of torture when he had decided it was a good idea to shoot Barry with arrows for no reason.

After several more puns, some friendly bantering that Oliver was inexplicably irritated with, and a cop car Snart was off to prison. “Do you make a habit of flirting with the villains?” Oliver asks and Barry thinks he looks annoyed but he’s doing that weird thing where he looks down at something like he was looking down at a vantage point. Except they weren’t on a building to be looking down at a vantage point. Oliver was weird.

“I don’t flirt with the villains, what the hell are you talking about?” he asks as they take the back allies back to Oliver’s lair. He hated it when Barry called it a lair but it totally was.

“Snart, who apparently knows all about your secret identity and has for some time considering he threatened me like four times,” Oliver says, sounding grumpy even through the voice manipulator.

Barry laughs, “oh my _god_ , that was so funny! He didn’t even know you were right there! I can’t believe he thought you’d be jealous of me working with you,” he says, snickering.

“Barry,” Oliver growls and Barry stops, turning to face Oliver because he was clearly upset though Barry had no clue why. “He knows who you are,” he says, voice edging on worried. That was impressive considering it was heavily altered.

He sighs, “Oliver he’s a criminal and a really hated one at that, he could walk into the police station with video proof that I’m the Flash and no one would ever even listen to him let alone believe him. Even if I confirmed what he was saying everyone would assume I was making shit up and that I had finally gone off the deep end, making up some crazy story about me being a superhero in response to my mother’s death and father’s trial. I am not in any danger of being exposed, which is why I don’t care,” he says, trying his best to calm Oliver’s nerves. On the plus side both he and Oliver had finally been upgraded to better names thanks to Iris, who had spent a good two hours thinking of what to rename them for an article she was writing about the two of them teaming up. Oliver even got a say in his name thanks to Barry texting him and now they didn’t have crappy alter-ego names.

Thankfully Oliver seems to accept this, “right. Okay, so long as you aren’t in any danger,” he says, relaxing a little.

“I’m not. Cops don’t listen to criminals and even if they did all I’d have to do is agree and they would assume it was bullshit and Len knows it, which is why he’s kept quiet. Also he doesn’t much like cops for obvious reasons,” he says. Because you know, criminal.

“Doesn’t mean you should flirt,” Oliver mumbles, crossing his arms and looking petulant.

“I did not flirt, Oliver, it’s called banter and it makes things interesting,” he says. If nothing else Len provided some entertainment with the whole super villain thing. Everyone else was boring and annoying.

“You were flirting, Barry, and it was weird. Don’t flirt with the villains, I can’t believe I actually had to say that,” he says and pauses, “Felicity and Diggle agree that it was creepy flirting.”

“Felicity and Diggle are delusional,” he says and they continue on to Oliver’s lair with mostly no hindrances until Oliver suddenly decided to veer off, Barry following him in case he saw something and needed backup.

“You, random person,” Oliver says and the put upon civilian jumps and looks over, looking frightened of the sudden callout. “Does he look like he’s wearing a red condom with eyeholes on his head?” he asks, pointing at Barry.

“I do not look like I’m wearing a red condom with eye holes on my head, O-Arrow,” he snaps, crossing his arms and earning a dirty look for almost giving his identity away.

“Well?” Oliver asks the random citizen.

“Umm,” she says, looking like she rather wouldn’t say.

“Told you,” Oliver says and arrows himself up the side of the building they were standing next to.

“Oh come on, I do not!” he yells and follows Oliver up via very fast running.

*

“That is hotter than I’d expect,” Barry says as Oliver works his way up that salmon ladder thing. He was drenched in sweat and concentrating fairly hard, which Barry wouldn’t have thought were optimal sexy conditions but they totally were.

Felicity nods, “hell yeah,” she says, all but drooling as they watched Oliver.

Diggle wanders over a few minutes later, “it was creepy when only Felicity was staring, its twice as creepy with you both staring,” he tells them.

“Come on Diggle,” Barry says, “you can’t deny that is hot, I don’t care how heterosexual you are Oliver Queen drenched in sweat is seriously sexy.”

“He isn’t hideous,” Diggle admits and Felicity gasps, informing Barry that she had been trying to get Dig to admit that for months. Now she was mad that he managed so easily. He couldn’t help that he was just _that_ good.

“That is why we stare,” Barry says and all three of them collectively turn back to Oliver, who had now taken notice of their taking notice.

“Is there a reason you’re all staring at me?” he asks, wiggling around self-consciously.

“Honey,” Barry says, “anyone with working eyes would stare at you right now and drool, sweat soaked you is an unexpected treat,” he says.

Oliver doesn’t look like he believes him so he squints at Diggle, “he’s not wrong,” Diggle says and Felicity’s mouth drops open as Diggle walks away grinning at her. Clearly this was some sort of inside joke and from the look on Oliver’s face he wasn’t in on it.

“Stop staring, it’s weird,” Oliver says, frowning and going back to his workout.

“Aww. Diggle ruined our fun,” Barry says, considerably disappointed.

“Actually,” Felicity says, “he did not.” She clicks a few things on her computer and Oliver from behind shows up on the screen, “I put that security camera there on purpose,” she tells him and they go back to drooling over Oliver’s muscles. In Felicity’s defense it was actually a good angle of the room; the fact that they got an eyeful of Oliver’s back muscles in action was just a fantastic bonus.

*

Barry was curled up on his couch asleep and mumbling something about hotdogs and kittens. Iris grins, “watch this,” she says and walks over to Barry, “hey Barry, who’s your best friend?” she asks.

“Hmm. Oliver,” he says, shifting slightly in his sleep. Iris looks so hilariously offended and Oliver starts laughing, but quietly so he didn’t disturb Barry’s sleep.

“What about Iris?” she asks, upset.

“She’s not as cute,” Barry says and Iris looks offended all over again.

“I’ve been around your whole life!” she says, crossing her arms and glaring at Barry’s sleeping body.

“You don’t like cats. Oliver likes cats,” he reasons. He always had been a cat person, they were far less maintenance and they were softer.

“I’m allergic to cats, I can’t help that!” she says.

“Proves Oliver is better,” Barry mumbles.

“You’re an asshole,” Iris mumbles and Barry at least agrees with her.

“What’s your favorite thing about Oliver?” he asks, stepping closer to the couch. Iris looks at Barry expectantly, probably expecting him to insult Oliver like he had her.

“His voice. He has a nice voice,” Barry says, humming in approval. Iris glares at him and Oliver grins, hell yeah, he survived Barry’s sleep-roasts.

“What’s your least favorite thing about Oliver?” Iris asks, intent on making sure he got insulted too.

“He doesn’t like nachos. Or chocolate. And that time he shot me with arrows,” he mumbles.

“He did _what_?” Iris yells and Barry jumps up, awake but not at all alert.

“What? What’s going on?” he asks, blinking rapidly to try and re-orient himself.

“Oliver shot you with arrows?” Iris asks and he hoped Barry had a good explanation for that because he didn’t.

Barry blinks and frowns, “is this something I said asleep? Because I once told I was a pink poodle asleep, you should know that I’m not reliable when sleeping,” he says, effectively covering everyone’s asses. Oliver was impressed. “Who even _does_ that?” Barry throws in, giving Oliver a _look_. Point taken, Barry. Shooting your boyfriend with arrows was not a good plan.

“So Oliver isn’t your best friend, ha, I knew it,” Iris says, grinning triumphantly at Oliver.

“That’s actually kind of true,” Barry says and Iris picks up the nearest pillow and smacks him square in the face with it. Barry probably should have been able to catch that with the super-reflexes but just-woken-up Barry was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

“You asshole!” Iris says, poised to smack him with the pillow again.

“What? You’re also my best friend, I can have two,” he says, “why limit myself?” Iris smacks him in the face with the pillow again.

“Your talking in your sleep is super cute,” Oliver tells him, smiling down at Barry.

Barry looks suddenly worried, “I didn’t admit to anything embarrassing, did I?” he asks, looking to Iris for help.

“You totally told Oliver all about that _massive_ crush you had on him in high school, remember all those pictures of him you had on your walls? Seriously, Oliver, he had Oliver Queen wallpaper,” Iris tells him. The fact that Barry turns bright red and hides his face confirms that this was true.

“I thought you said you hated me in high school,” Oliver says.

“Oh, that’s just what he told everyone. Secretly he was like _obsessed_ with you,” Iris tells him gleefully.

“I was not!” Barry squeaks out, “I just thought he was cute!” he says in his own defense.

“I thought you hated my hair,” Oliver says, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh my god, he told you that? He did not, he practically worshiped you,” Iris says.

Barry looks downright horrified and Oliver supposes if Felicity had told Barry that he had built a shrine in his room of him in high school he’d be embarrassed too. “And you doubted that I was your soul mate?” he asks, frowning. As if that was explainable when Barry had always, on some level, known.

“Everyone has celebrity crushes, Oliver, the fact that you happened to be mine was a coincidence, not evidence that you’re my soul mate,” Barry says and Oliver was wrong, apparently that _could_ be explained away.

“Told you I was right about the soul mate thing when we were in grade ten let alone after,” Iris says in a haughty tone, grinning down at Barry, “and you didn’t actually tell Oliver any of that in your sleep. That’s what you get for thinking I’d share my best friend status,” she tells him.

Barry gasps, looking hilariously offended at her for telling Oliver what looked to be his biggest secret. “I am telling your soul mate every embarrassing story I can think of!” Barry threatens.

“Fine, I have no secrets that are as embarrassing as you worshiping your soul mate in high school,” she says.

“Blonde hair,” Barry counters and Iris gasps.

“You wouldn’t _dare_ ,” she says, raising her pillow.

“Oh but I would,” Barry says, dodging her pillow at a high speed but not a speed that was high enough to be suspicious. Oliver smiles watching as Barry picks up a pillow and they start battling it out, content to remain on the sidelines.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! Though I am working on a one-shot based on one of the scenes that happens in this chapter.

_Three Months Later_

Barry grins at Oliver, “I was _right_ ,” he says excitedly.

Oliver raises an eyebrow, “about what, exactly?” he asks.

“Eddy not being Iris’ soul mate. She insisted but I _knew_ she was wrong, she would have known, and she just met her soul mate who also happens to be a cop, hence dreaming about a police station, and I was _right_ ,” he says. Oliver smiles at him, shaking his head and returning to reading the morning paper and drinking the coffee Barry made. They had fallen into a nice routine in the last couple of months, taking turns staying at each other’s places depending on what crazy might be trying to ruin their respective cities that week.

More than once they had been questioned on why they didn’t move in together but neither of them could afford to leave their city behind, Barry was one of the view people qualified to deal with metahumans and Oliver had finally found a balance between pleasing his family and living for himself. His side job as the Arrow allowed him to both live up to the expectations his father had set out for him before he had died and his running the club still technically linked him into his family business, pleasing his mother. Thea had gotten her shit together somewhat, with Roy’s help, and she was now being groomed to take over QC, which had also pleased Moira. They would work out some sort of living accommodations eventually but for now they were happy taking turns at each other’s places. It wasn’t like it took Barry long to travel from one place to another, he could run so fast he could literally run through the timeline.

Oliver thought that was way cool. Barry, however, was unimpressed with the ability but it had led to discovering Cisco was a metahuman. It had also led to some uncomfortable realizations about Wells.

Iris sends him a flurry of pictures and Barry wasn’t sure what he was expecting but he sure as hell wasn’t expecting Iris to be paired up with another woman. “What?” Oliver asks, sensing something was off. He had killer instincts; Barry had to admit, though that wasn’t literal anymore, thankfully.

“Iris’ soul mate is a woman. Didn’t see that coming, but she looks happy so whatever,” he says, pocketing his phone. Well, that proved the whole ‘your soul mate always matches with your sexuality’ thing wrong because as far as he knew Iris was heterosexual. He supposed if nothing else it would be interesting to see how the relationship played out.

“Hmm,” Oliver says, “did I tell you Felicity met her soul mate?” he asks.

“No, what the hell Oliver? She didn’t tell me either, don’t leave me out because I’m not on Team Arrow!” he says, mock offended. He had probably been busy and didn’t remember, or he forgot to use his words because Oliver was terrible for that. He was excellent at picking up even the slightest changes in behavior and correctly interpreting why the change happened and he forgot not everyone had that skill.

“Oh course you’re on Team Arrow. Whatever that is. And she probably didn’t tell you because he came off way creepier than I did and that isn’t an exaggeration,” he says.

“Team Arrow is you, Felicity, and Diggle, Ollie, duh. Have you not seen the news? I have Team Flash!” he says excitedly, “so I’m curious, how did Felicity’s soul mate out do you?” he asks, leaning forward because Oliver had that protective look on his face and that meant this story has got to be good.

“Reporters are idiots, except Iris, we’ve established this. And you know how Felicity decided to get another job to throw my mom’s suspicion off? Well she met Ray there and he offered her a new job, which wouldn’t have been so bad if he had taken no for an answer. But he ignored her so hard he _bought the company she’s working for_ so that she’s working for him regardless of where she stays,” he says.

Barry wrinkles his nose, “yikes. That’s… yeah he outdid you,” he says, “what’s she planning on doing about it, if anything?”

Oliver gives him a dirty look that he certainly didn’t deserve but he gets the impression that Oliver was annoyed with the situation, not him. “She figured maybe, _maybe_ , he isn’t as creepy as he came off because we worked out alright,” he says.

“That doesn’t really mean anything…” Barry says, frowning.

“Oh I’ve told her that, trust me, but she’s a grown woman she can do what she wants and if Ray harms a single hair on his head I will kill him,” he says casually.

“ _Oliver_ ,” Barry says, “no!”

“Barry I don’t need to kill him myself for him to end up dead, this state has the death penalty,” he says.

“I know that, asshole, my dad’s set to die, remember?” he asks and Oliver at least looks marginally guilty for not using his head. “I’m glad you have realized the error in your ways,” Barry says, grinning at Oliver.

*

When he wakes up something is different, he could feel it, but he didn’t know what. It wasn’t until he met Tommy for lunch and he threw an arm around Oliver’s shoulders, he still hadn’t grasped the ‘touch sensitive’ thing yet, and he didn’t react that he realized what had happened. Poor Tommy had been abandoned near immediately in favor of Oliver finding Barry because one of two things had happened. Option one, Barry was perfectly fine doing whatever it was he was planning on doing today, or option two, the poor thing had absorbed Oliver’s touch sensitivity.

Either way Oliver wanted to be there if for drastically different reasons. Barry opens the door, on the phone with someone that Oliver assumed was Iris, and he walks in and kisses Barry like he’d never get the chance to again. Barry squeaks and throws his phone aside, pulling Oliver closer and kicking the door shut. He could hear Iris yelling at Barry from the phone but he ignored that in favor of feeling Barry’s body without wanting to flee from it.

Barry pulls away after a minute though not too far, “where did this come from?” he asks, breathing a bit hard.

Oliver grins, “I woke up today and apparently it’s possible for me to absorb bigger habits of yours, like not wanting to punch stuff in the face for touching me,” he says, grinning.

He didn’t much expect Barry to look horrified at that concept but he does, “I don’t want your PTSD!” he says, waving one of his hands around, “that would suck! I’m a cuddler!”

“If it happens we’ll deal with it but for now can we just enjoy the fact that I don’t feel overwhelmed right now?” he asks. Barry is more than content to go along with things.

*

The last thing he expected was for Oliver to show up at his door and kiss him but he was more than happy with that development, even if he knew it wasn’t permanent. He had heard all the stories, of course, about Oliver’s escapades when he was young and how much of a playboy he was and whatever but he obviously didn’t get to experience that. Apparently kissing skills went nowhere because Oliver was a _great_ kisser and Barry was sure he didn’t measure up, not that Oliver seemed to care. He just seemed to be happy with the new found ability to actually make contact with people. Well, him.

Barry was more than a little flattered that Oliver ditched Tommy to go find him the second he realized he didn’t seem to be displaying that particular symptom of his PTSD. He was certain Iris had called like ten times, she had a lot to say about her soul mate Patty, who seemed like a nice enough person, but at the moment Barry was more caught up in his own soul mate. They were curled up on the couch with as much of them intertwined as humanly possible watching some movie Oliver liked. The plot was boring as fuck and the humor was terrible but Oliver was enjoying himself so Barry was happy too.

Oliver tightens the arm he had wrapped around Barry’s waist, “you know this isn’t going to last forever, right?” he says quietly. No matter how many times Barry had told him he didn’t care Oliver remained self-conscious about the touch thing.

Barry pulls himself into more of a sitting position, “Oliver I know, to be honest I could care less. What worries me is that I’ll at some point absorb your touch sensitivity, you’ve described it to me, I don’t think I can handle that,” he says. Everything was a problem for Oliver; he was just shockingly good at dealing with it, especially in a fight. And Oliver thought he was strong, he had nothing on Oliver.

“You’re a lot stronger than you know, you’d be fine. It would take some time, yeah, but you deal with everything far better than I do, I’m sure you’d deal with that better too,” he says. Oliver had way more faith in him than he did in himself. He had asked Oliver about the touch thing once because Oliver had brought it up once again, probably as a lame excuse to push him away like Laurel said he would. The way Oliver described it frankly sounded terrifying, like everything was too much, including air if there was a sudden temperature raise or drop. He had grown used to some things, like shaking hands, and temperature changes, but sometimes it still felt uncomfortable to wear clothes. _Clothes_. Barry did not have the mental strength to not be able to wear shirts because it irritated his skin too much. Or _air_ for gods sakes.

“That’s nice, but I think you’re wrong,” Barry says, shuddering. His skin itched just _thinking_ about it.

“Hey, its alright Barry, take a breath,” Oliver says, “focus on the movie.” He does, but only because thinking about being overwhelmed by everything around him was really unpleasant and he wanted nothing to do with it. The movie plot was even more boring and dull than he had remembered and that was saying something.

*

“Oh my god he’s the little spoon!” Iris says, interrupting Barry’s peaceful sleep wrapped around Oliver.

“That is so adorable,” a second voice says.

“I sent Felicity like sixty pictures- oh, they’re waking up! Hey guys!” Iris says, waving at them. Barry half assed waved back and Oliver went from looking peaceful and asleep to looking like a demon took over his flesh prison.

Barry laughs and peels himself off of Oliver; stretching himself out, “how did you even get in here?” he asks Iris and… her soul mate, Patty, he recognized her from the pictures.

“Out,” Oliver snaps, pulling his pillow over his head.

“Be nice,” Barry says, knowing his efforts were futile. Oliver makes an annoyed noise and curls into a tighter ball. Iris had broken in, which was surprisingly easy according to her but Barry knew that. All his blasting in and out at super speeds had made the locks loose. Oliver wasn’t impressed with that development but Barry pointed out that not many people could outrun him. Actually exactly one person could outrun him and even at that they did manage to capture the Reverse Flash thanks to some help from Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle.

He extracts himself, Iris, and poor Patty from his bedroom before Oliver got even more bitchy and he flips through the pictures Iris had taken. “Oh my god,” he says, almost spitting his coffee out, “you can see the exact moment when the devil entered Oliver’s body,” he says. He flips back to the picture before Oliver had woken up wherein he looked peaceful and cute, and then flipped to the next one. In that one he looked like he was going to chew Iris’ head off he was glaring so hard, and the red-eye put a cherry on the demon cake.

“Wow, I captured a rare moment of demonic possession,” Iris jokes, snickering while Patty watched in confusion. Poor girl, she hadn’t gotten quite used to Barry’s and Iris’ relationship according to Iris, this was technically the first time they had met in person. He didn’t envy her at all. They chat back and forth, Patty adding something every once in a while. Eventually Oliver emerges from Barry’s bedroom, steals his coffee, and goes back to the bedroom.

“He doesn’t like sugar in his coffee, he’s not going to be a happy camper when he drinks that,” Barry says and is if on cue the bedroom door opens and Oliver stomps back out looking grumpier than normal. “That’s what you get for stealing my coffee,” Barry says, grinning.

Oliver glares at him, “you’re a disgusting creature,” he says and the look on Patty’s face was priceless.

“Says the guy who doesn’t like nachos or chocolate, I’d rather be disgusting than defective,” he counters and Patty looks even more horrified. Iris snickers, having grown used to their quick banter that neither one of them found insulting even though other people seemed to think they should. It wasn’t Barry’s fault Oliver was clearly not right, who didn’t like chocolate? Defective people.

“Oh please, you like pineapples and anchovies on pizza, I might be defective but at least my pizza preferences didn’t cause the Crusades,” he mumbles, pouring his own damn coffee.

“Oh my god Oliver, anchovies and pineapples on pizza did not cause the Crusades, you are so dramatic,” Barry says, rolling his eyes.

“I agree with Oliver, Barry, anchovies and pineapple on pizza is just _wrong_ ,” Iris says, wrinkling her nose.

“I kind of like anchovies and pineapple on pizza,” Patty says self-consciously.

“See! I am not alone in this, we clearly have superior taste compared to you two,” Barry says, grinning.

“In soul mates, maybe,” Oliver says.

“Sure, I’m a great soul mate!” Barry says enthusiastically and Iris and Patty snicker.

“That is not what I meant and you know it,” Oliver tells him, raising an eyebrow and looking grumpy.

“Well that’s how I took it. Besides, I _am_ a great soul mate,” Barry says and Oliver finally relents, smiling and agreeing with Barry’s assessment of his soul mate awesomeness. Which, _duh_. “Don’t worry honey, you have you perks too,” he says, earning an eye roll from Oliver.

*

“How does he _function_?” Barry asks Felicity while they hide from the general presence of people at the party they were stuck going to. He wasn’t going to leave Iris hanging and Joe had to meet Patty at some point, even if he was rather surprised by her lady status. He was fairly certain they all had that in common minus Iris, who seemed pretty blasé about her sudden bisexuality.

Felicity shrugs, “I have no idea. Frankly I have no clue how the two of you went through all that crazy roller coaster of emotions and flipping traits and… all that other stuff. I mean yesterday I ended up stuck with some of Ray’s traits and I spent _five hours_ researching puffins because I thought they were cute, Barry. Five _hours_. For no reason. Honestly I did not expect to develop such a crazy fixation complex and now I know why he was so creepy when we first met, he like… blocks everything out, I missed three calls from Oliver. I never miss calls from Oliver, but don’t tell him it was about puffins I told him it was some Ray stuff. But yeah. I have no clue how Oliver functions, or how you function with Oliver’s traits. I don’t want to be that fixated on anything ever again, unless I’ve been procrastinating on some Arrow stuff for a while. Then it’ll be useful,” she says, ending her long rant with no eloquence at all.

That had been the first trait Ray had adopted, in the middle of a business meeting, and he even got the awkward shifting around to go with it. Barry would feel bad for him but he might have deserved that just a little given his super creepy introduction. Felicity happened to have been right about him not being a total creep, he just had some problems realizing people were not projects, fixating on them to the extent he did with his work was generally creepy and unwanted. But he was learning, slowly, even if Oliver still hated him and made sure he knew it. “It’s not so bad once you get a little more used to it,” Barry says, “minus the whole touch thing. If I could never absorb that again that’d be awesome because _everything_ was overwhelming. Even _air_ , Felicity.”

He was still recovering from that and thankfully Oliver had been very helpful even if none of his advice worked for Barry in the slightest. Oliver was naturally standoffish and Barry was… not, at all. When his form of comfort was touch and touch of any kind made him want to jump out of his own skin into some sort of incorporeal form it didn’t really go well. “Well, in Oliver’s defense that wasn’t something that was just thrown on him one day, it was way more gradual so at some point he must have learned to cope with it,” she says. Yeah, in some terrible ways too, like just not mentioning he was uncomfortable like he did with Tommy. The guy was a cuddler and was way more obtuse than Oliver on any given occasion so he didn’t ever seem to notice that Oliver was trying his best not to throw him across the room in an attempt to avoid contact.

“I guess, but seriously, it was easily worse than being struck by lightning. At least lightning gave me abs, I’m pretty sure Oliver’s PTSD gave me PTSD from dealing with the PTSD. That just so convoluted,” he says, making a face. God knew how Oliver did anything; he had sat in the corner of his room in a dead panic for two days because everything was just too much, even _light_ was too much. Oliver was very good about the whole thing and tried to help as much as he could, which admittedly wasn’t a whole lot but Barry appreciated the effort anyways.

“So,” Felicity says, “what do you think of Patty?” she asks, obviously having formulated an opinion of her own.

Barry shrugs, “she seems nice, Iris is happy, which is really all I care about,” he says.

“You do realize she’s basically the lady version of you right? You’re basically Iris’ soul mate, Oliver’s been grumpy about it for days but he probably hasn’t told you that because he has this thing with secrets and never communicating ever. And he thinks _Ray_ has issues,” Felicity says, rolling her eyes.

He would have liked to refute that but upon inspection Patty _was_ basically the female version of him, they even had a similar background with the death of a parent fueling their present and all that. Weird. “I don’t know why Oliver’s upset about it, I have no interest in Iris and she has even less interest in me,” he says logically. There had been a time, a long time ago, when he had feelings for her, but that had come and passed forever ago.

“Yeah, I told him that. And he seems to think that him-being-the-Hood thing settled too nicely so he’s pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop, which I have also told him is ridiculous considering you’re pretty upfront about things,” Felicity says.

“Ugh. Alright, I’ll find a way to bring it up and hopefully deal with his insecurities,” Barry says. It would be nice if Oliver talked to _him_ about these things but they were working on it. Slowly. And somewhat painfully. “At least I finally managed to convince him I was not into Leonard Snart, which was much harder than it should have been,” he says and Felicity betrays him by laughing at his plight.

“Oh my god that was so funny,” she says, snickering to herself. Well that made one of them, poor Barry had to deal with Oliver’s gripping over Snart for weeks, and Snart thought it was hilarious. He had also figured out that Arrow and Oliver were obviously the same person given Oliver’s protectiveness of him totally gave him away. Not that Snart was about to say anything about it, but he did like to lord it over Oliver’s head.

“Well I’m glad one of us had fun with that because I did not,” he says. Oliver wasn’t easy to convince either but he had eventually accepted that maybe Barry was actually telling the truth after he pointed out that after all the effort he’d gone through with Oliver it wouldn’t make sense to stick around if he didn’t genuinely care.

“Come on, it was the most annoyed ‘I love you’ I’ve ever seen and Oliver looked _so_ surprised, it was cute,” Felicity says.

“To you maybe, I’m pretty sure that was like the worst love confession ever,” he says. First off he had said it out of annoyance, problem one, and problem two Oliver had looked so surprised it was almost offensive. Granted he had issues so Barry let it go but still, he thought that it was pretty obvious that he cared.

“Ray stalked me for three weeks,” Felicity says.

“Right. You win,” he says.

*

“So,” Cisco says, “you ran into a metahuman that can alter matter and… _this_ happened?” he asks, staring down at the extremely angry white fluffy kitten Barry had set down on the examination table in the lab.

“Yeah, and I don’t think he’s happy about this,” Barry says. Oliver lets out a loud yowl to indicate that he was indeed unimpressed with his current fleshy cage. “He’s pretty cute though,” Barry says and he extends his hand to Oliver’s face so he could sniff. He gets an angry swat and a loud yowl for his efforts, irritated that Barry would treat him like a cat instead of a person Barry thinks. Unfortunately for Oliver he _was_ currently a cat, which required treating him like one at least in some respects.

“He is pretty cute, minus the murderous tendencies,” Cisco agrees and he reaches out to pet Oliver only to receive a loud snarl and several scratches on his hand for his efforts. “Ow, no he’s not,” Cisco says, cradling his hand, “he’s a little demon!”

“Oliver is not a little demon, he’s just not happy about being a cat,” Barry says, jumping to Oliver’s defense, “this is fixable, right?” he asks. He wasn’t fond of dating a cat for a number of ethically obvious reasons.

“Duh. We just need to run some tests, assuming your demon hair ball will let us,” Cisco says. Oliver hisses loudly, his already poufy hair fluffing up even more, his tiny body shaking with rage. “Fine, be a cat forever,” Cisco says, throwing his hands up and leaving Oliver with Barry. In the end Oliver ended up alright with the tests so long as Barry was either there or running them himself, which had gone great until Barry ended up hit with the metahuman’s power too.

When Oliver sees him he is pissed off, Barry could feel it, but that was probably because Oliver was the size of a grapefruit and Barry was the size of a large watermelon. Oliver resembled an angry floof with eyes and Barry looked like an actual cat, if a little on the large size for a cat. Several loud hisses, scattered instruments and clawed humans later Oliver had managed to wedge himself into an air duct that gave him a good view of the room while Caitlin and Cisco ran tests on Barry.

He, personally, was excited that he managed to retain his speed in cat form. Oliver had let out a loud meow to show how impressed he was with that because he had retained minimal skills. It was hardly Barry’s fault he could go fast and Oliver needed opposable thumbs for his talents. He was still a professional asshole so he obviously hadn’t lost all his abilities.

With some work and a few tests Barry and Oliver were restored to their natural forms and the metahuman was caught swiftly and efficiently by one very pissed off Oliver. The cell to the door to the metahuman’s cell closes and Oliver flips him off with both hands, “ _fuck_ you,” he snaps and stomps off.

“Guess he wasn’t happy about having to pop in a box, huh?” Cisco says, snickering.

Barry laughs, “oh he has revenge plans for all the pictures you took of him and sent to Felicity and Diggle. Be prepared,” he says. Currently Oliver-as-a-kitten was everyone’s phone background and he was annoyed with it but he had been _so cute_ as a cat. Felicity had an adorable picture of the two of them together, Oliver looking like an angry fluff as usual while Barry sat proudly beside him, dwarfing Oliver with his size. That one was Diggle’s favorite, and the one video Cisco took of Oliver trying desperately to leap out of the trash can he had fallen off of Cisco’s desk into. Barry had rescued him from his tissue prison and Oliver was not happy that it was caught on video. Mostly because the most embarrassing thing Barry had to show for his time as a cat was taking a corner too fast and slamming into one of the glass doors because cats weren’t heavy enough to set off the automatic open setting.

“Ohh, I’m _scared_ ,” Cisco says, snickering and probably not taking Barry that seriously, or Oliver for that matter. He supposed Cisco could be forgiven, Oliver had spent five days as an angry puff ball of doom, but Cisco would learn.

*

“What’d Cisco think of his present?” Oliver asks, carefully moving around Barry to avoid any contact. Poor thing, the cat incident had taken its toll and he had been extra sensitive to touch lately. Thankfully villains seemed to be taking a vacation so Oliver was at least off the hook from Arrow duties in the meantime.

“Cisco is not happy that you have ruined everything he loves,” Barry says. Oliver was surprisingly good at finding out what irritated people in ten seconds or less and for Cisco it was his system. No one understood the disaster that Cisco worked with but as a cat Oliver had figured it out, and refused to share, and then completely rearranged everything Cisco came in contact with. Even his freezer had been rearranged, _both_ of his freezers. It was driving him nuts trying to rearrange everything but every time he had fixed something he found at least ten more things out of place. Oliver had rearranged Cisco’s _staples_ he was that dedicated.

“Good. He shouldn’t have filmed me trying to get out of that trash can. Or made me a little Arrow sweater that he had been intent on trying to stuff me into. I hope he enjoyed the disaster that I turned his hands into,” he mumbles. Cisco had not been impressed with all the scratches but it was his own fault he had forgotten about Oliver not being fond of touch, god knew how _that_ happened. It wasn’t like Oliver hadn’t been overly clear that he wanted nothing to do with touch ever, unless it was Barry and only with a purpose. So Cisco did have the damaged hands coming, not that he hadn’t gotten his petty revenge.

He pulls his phone out and shows Oliver the background, which was Oliver-the-cat in a green Arrow sweater looking ready to murder whoever took the picture, “Photoshop is still a thing, and he photoshopped that sweater onto every single picture we all took of you. They’re all over the internet and Arrow Cat has been a huge hit with the kids,” he says, grinning.

“Remember when you replaced me as your soul mate with Cisco? Well I’m replacing you with Felicity,” Oliver says, offended that Barry would use one of those pictures as his phone background.

“Okay but you don’t like chocolate, who doesn’t like chocolate? And if Felicity is your replacement because she _wouldn’t_ use cute Arrow Cat pictures as her phone background you have way too much faith in her. She has a stuffed Arrow Cat on her bed, it annoys Ray,” he says, grinning.

Oliver looks torn between being happy that something Felicity did was annoying Ray and being annoyed that the thing that was annoying Ray also annoyed him. “That better be a custom stuffed animal,” he says, crossing his arms.

“It isn’t,” Barry says and runs off to go get the small collection of stuff he had collected of Arrow and Flash. “Look at all the cute stuff they’ve made of us! There’s a collectable Flash/ Arrow pack called ‘Flarrow’! And the kitten stuffy,” he says, dropping the kitten stuffy on the kitchen counter.

Of course it isn’t the kitten Oliver focuses on, instead he picks up the Captain Cold figurine, “really, Barry?” he asks.

“What, action figure us needed an action figure villain to fight, it was either him or Mick and like him better so. Don’t be grumpy, we’re supposed to kick his ass together, _Flarrow_!” Barry says excitedly, clapping.

“Flarrow is a stupid name,” Oliver says grumpily.

“Flarrow is adorable and it’s way better than Coldflash,” he says.

Oliver narrows his eyes, “what’s a ‘Coldflash?” he asks.

“Same thing as Flarrow but less cute,” he says, “they needed to name the combo packs something, stop acting like I personally victimized you by picking up adorable toys named after us!” he says.

“You picked up an Arrow kitten,” Oliver says in an accusatory tone.

“It’s cute!” Barry insists. Oliver is not convinced.

*

Laurel was taking care of Len so it wasn’t like they had to _worry_ really. Oliver had been convinced that she’d be a terrible superhero but Barry had had faith and after Sarah… well she needed _something_. He had convinced her not to train with Oliver though, he could still feel those arrows in his back when he thought about it, and Laurel had agreed to train elsewhere. Now it was convenient because Oliver was having another one of those rare not-touch-sensitive moments and he was determined to make the most of it.

He didn’t expect the curtain he and Oliver were making out behind to be pulled down by Laurel being tossed across the room though. She glares at them, “are you two kidding me? I thought you were dealing with Mick or something!” she says, offended that they were being lazy superheroes.

“Think of this as your superhero audition,” Oliver says, “you’re doing well,” he throws out, probably showing faith in her a little too late.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me,” another voice drawls from across the room, “I set all this up for you and you squander it by making out with your brooding boyfriend?” Len asks, deeply offended. “And then you leave me with _this_ ,” he says, gesturing to Laurel, who was back on her feet now.

“Watch it, pal; I was kicking your ass,” Laurel snaps.

“Who cares? I didn’t come here to duke it out with you, I came here for _him_ and he ditches me for emo Robin Hood. If Canary here is going to be my new opposition at least let me down easy, Scarlet,” he says, pressing his hand to his heart dramatically.

“Um,” Barry says eloquently.

“Oh for gods sakes, I was doing just fine before I’ll do just fine now, go back to making out,” Laurel snaps, jumping forward to make an attempt at capturing Len, neatly dodging a blast from the cold gun as she did so. Oliver sighs and pulls away from Barry for a moment, pulling an arrow from his quiver and aiming, adopting a perfect archer’s stance. That was far more attractive than it had a right to be in Barry’s humble opinion. He lets the arrow fly, cutting the electrical wire holding up some light fixture that was hanging precariously, forcing Len to dodge the fixture. Laurel dives on him and after a few traded punches she manages to capture Len. They both turn and give them disapproving glares for their behavior and Oliver laughs.

“Jeeze, you’d assume she was a disappointed parent,” Oliver says.

“To be fair we _did_ ditch her to go make out behind a curtain,” Barry points out, “if anything earns a little disapproval it’s that.”

“I slept with her sister, nearly got her killed, then she actually _did_ die getting involved with my business, and you’re the only reason I even agreed to having her take over Sarah’s position. That’s all way worse than making out behind a curtain,” Oliver says bluntly. Boy, did he have a habit of being a buzzkill.

“You know what’s really not sexy? Dead Sarah. You’ve ruined the mood, Laurel has won, she’s shamed us into behaving properly,” he says and walks away, Oliver following after him.

“Oh come on, wait, I was enjoying the kisses!” Oliver says, hurrying to keep up. That was hilarious because there was no way he could keep up to Barry if he was trying but he lets Oliver catch up anyways because he felt bad. Plus he absolutely did want more kisses and his place wasn’t far from the scene of the lasted crime.

“Let it be known that I only let you catch up because I love you and I wouldn’t want you to feel bad that you can’t keep up to my awesome speed, not because I want more kisses,” Barry says, pulling his hood down and fluffing his hair. Whether or not Oliver was right about him looking like a red condom with eyeholes, and he wasn’t right, the hood was considerably uncomfortable. At least Oliver’s hood flowed in the wind, which made Barry wonder how the hell it always stayed up. Maybe he clipped it to what little hair he had? Did he glue it? That would be hilarious. Superhero magic?

“And let it be known that I will let you believe that that is true because I love you, and I wouldn’t want you to think that I think that basically being Sonic the Hedgehog is not a cool superpower at all. But it does seem to boost your confidence, so if you think being Sonic the Hedgehog is cool that’s your prerogative,” he says, drawing Barry back in for a kiss. He goes willingly, happy to enjoy this for as long as he could before Oliver went back to being sensitive to touch, or worse, _he_ ended up sensitive to touch.

He would have never noticed the object flying at his head but Oliver somehow does and deflects it for him, sending what looked to be a piece of trash flying away from his head. “You told me I wasn’t superhero material and then you abandon me to deal with some asshole with trigger finger on a gun that could turn me into a human popsicle and _I’m_ the bad superhero choice? You two are embarrassing,” Laurel snaps, poised with another piece of trash in her hand, ready to throw it.

“You insisted that you were good enough, I figured if you were right you’d be fine, and if not you’d be dead. Clearly I was wrong,” Oliver says.

“Ollie! We weren’t going to leave her to die! What the hell!” he says, offended that Oliver decided kisses were _that_ urgent.

“We wouldn’t have gotten to her in time,” Oliver reasons, which makes no sense.

“I can run so fast I can time travel, you have been fine Laurel, making out is not that important,” he assures her.

“The fact that you have to tell me that is embarrassing, Barry. I’m going home so I can sit in a hot tub and think about how much better of a superhero I am than the two of you. Also, what was with the weird flirting with Cold?” she asks.

“I told you it was weird flirting!” Oliver says, latching onto the offhand comment immediately.

“Oh for god sakes, Ollie, it is not I just like the banter!” he insists, annoyed that Laurel managed to dredge _this_ argument back up again.

“I hope you argue about this all night,” she tells them and disappears around the corner, clearly done with this situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also no offense to anyone who likes coldflash, me too y'all, but Oliver is an insecure shit and Barry needed to reassure him :)


End file.
